Igby Goes Down

Rating:
Summary: Bloody Brilliant
Review: The fact that the reviews of this DVD are so varied makes me love it even more. It is aloof and heartbreaking and witty and dark. If you liked Catcher In The Rye and The Graduate you have to see this film and then decide for yourself if it is the worst movie ever or the second coming. I loved every minute of it. The performances are sterling and the dialouge will have you reaching for a pen and paper ever other scene. Amanda should have gotten an Oscar nomination and for that unexpected thing alone, it is a great.

Rating:
Summary: TAKE A DEEP BREATH....
Review: ( NOT YOU SUSAN SARANDON)... AS SHE WAS IN THE MOVIE (I CAN'T GIVE OUT THE PART). THIS MOVIE IS SO AMAZING. RYAN P, KIERAN CULKIN (HE IS TOO CUTE TO BE TRUE :) AND SUSAN SARANDON, NOT TO MENTION AMANDA P., AND CLAIRE D. A STAR STUDDED MOVIE WITH SUCH DARK HUMOR AND AWESOME ACTNG. I LOVE THIS MOVIE. UNFORTUNATELY IT IS A LITTLE EXPENSIVE THAN REGULAR DVDS. I GAVE IT 5 STARS FOR IT'S ORIGINAL PLOT LINE, ACTING AND KIERAN DESERVES AN AWARD OR SOMETHING....A NOMINATION PERHAPS, MOVE ASIDE MACAULAY....

Rating:
Summary: IGBY'S A BORE
Review: Simply put, IGBY GOES DOWN just didn't work for me. The characters were one-dimensional and unconvincing and the plot fell short. While striving to be a dark comedy about an affluent Manhattan adolescent boy searching to understand the meaning of life amongst his dysfunctional family members, I quickly became bored and uninterested. I was disappointed that Igby's motivations were never explored or even hinted at. He simply appeared to be just another rich kid rebelling against society. While the cast of this film is impressive, only the father (Bill Pullman) provided an exceptional performance as the mentally ill father. Otherwise I failed to feel any sympathy for the others and didn't care what happened to them.

Maybe I just don't get it? Maybe I was in the wrong frame of mind when I watched this film? Nobody knows. What I can say with any assurance is that I had high expectations for IGBY GOES DOWN.

Rating:
Summary: "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it."
Review: This movie blew me away like few that I've seen, and can easily list: Lone Star, Almost Famous, Grand Canyon, Europa Europa, and maybe one or two others.

For me, a great movie is one that teaches me something profound about the world that I didn't know before, and might not have learned otherwise. This is that kind of movie, though as other reviews make obvious, it isn't a movie for everyone.

Don't read the back of the box. Don't look at the cast list. Don't scan the rest of the video shelves looking for something better. Take a chance. Get it. Watch it.

Rating:
Summary: A Razor-Sharp Comedy
Review: 'Igby Goes Down' is an unsettling dark comedy about Igby (Kieran Culkin), a young man raised in the cold and hostile environment of the amoral super-rich. The only positive influence in his life is his father (Bill Pullman), a schizophrenic who rebels against the dictatorship of his wealth and his icy wife (played by the excellent Susan Sarandon), only to dissolve into a catatonic state. Taking after dear old dad, Igby makes one attempt after another to break free from his family's clutches and their ironclad expectations of how he should act and who he should be. Enduring military school and near homelessness in New York City, Igby experiences some of the more mundane aspects of a coming-of-age film (love, sex, violence).

But 'Igby Goes Down' is far from a mundane film. Igby is an imperfect hero, not surprisingly because he was raised by the original Ice Maiden. There are elements of this coldness in his own character, which makes it difficult to sympathize completely his plight.

For that matter, there is coldness in all the characters, save Sookie (Clare Danes). Jeff Goldblum is surprisingly perfect as DH Barnes, an indifferent wife-cheating "friend of the family" who treats Igby with only the barest of interests. Oliver (Ryan Phillippe) is Igby's perfect older brother, accordingly cold, calculating, and ever-opportunistic. Rachel (Amanda Peet) and Russel (Jared Harris) make up Igby's surrogate family in the City, and despite drug addiction and various dementias, actually seem better suited for Igby than his real family.

This film has been compared to the classic novel, 'The Catcher in the Rye,' and indeed, there are some similarities. Igby is a saner, heartier Holden Caulfield, who survives on wit and a callousness to the savage world around him. A stunning and often funny film, that, like Igby, just seems unable to pull free from icy wit into real brilliance.

Rating:
Summary: Not too bad
Review: Not a bad film. Not too bad at all. I'm not really interested in writing a review at this moment. Deal with it.

Rating:
Summary: bad, do not see, those who enjoy are fools
Review: boring, annoying, bad charactars, no plot, feel bad after watching because I will never have those two hours back, and I'll regret that when I'm older.

Rating:
Summary: IGBY'S LESS THAN ZERO
Review: The reference, of course, is to the 1980's film starring Robert Downy Jr. Culkin does his best to mimic the acting style of Downy and succeeds marginally. At its heart, this film tries to be a black comedy, but ends up being a rather dull character study with little laughs. The movie plugs along shifting from one unreal situation to the next - with Igby as the thread. In the vain of all new edgy independent films, the director makes no effort at creating sympathy for anyone of his characters; he keeps them all two-dimensional and rather boring. Not to say this movie is without some interesting moments, one involving the dad's dinner table behavior. Bottom Line: the overall performances in the film were pretyy good, but the film is not memorable in the least.

Rating:
Summary: 2.5 Stars. It was okay.
Review: This movie had a lot of potential to be a good movie, and actually it wasn't bad. Don't over-analyze character development and all that like the rest of the critics. This movie is designed for a very specific audience. Those who are 15 - 25, bored with their life, and afraid of their uncertain futures.

Even within this target audience, the movie has it's misgivings. The problems with this movie center around the main character Igby, which isn't good.

Kieran Culkin was not a good actor. I could accept him for most of the film, but in the final scenes of emotional release, his feeble acting job didn't quite bring the anguish his character should have been feeling.

Aside from the acting, the film also had some pretty weak dialogue. I get the impression that Igby's jokes were a little too pseudo-intellectual for me, I just didn't get the humour.

Overall, the film comes off as someone's life story, that while honest, wasn't interesting enough, so it got butchered by a screenwriter until plausibility was lost. This still would have made a decent movie if the lead actor could show more believable emotion in the very few scenes that required it.

I think this film is for younger kids who can probably connect more with lonliness and emotional voids in their family relationships. To the rest of us, this film while moderately entertaining, is an average comedy/drama movie in every way.

Rating:
Summary: no good
Review: A clever script doesn't make for an enjoyable film. I find every Culkin to be a disgrace to acting, while the other actors are just plain annoying. Much of the dialogue seems sophisticated beyond the characters intellect. The plot is dollar-paper thin and a steal from various books and films. By the end of the movie, you hope that not only does Sarandon's character die, but that Igby goes six feet down.