Rating: 
Summary: A Real and Sophisticate Horror Movie
Review: Neil Labute's look at the way we let each other change ourselves to be the perfect mate is almost as good as his disturbing, and down right horrifying first movie "In The Company Of Men." Paul Rudd plays Adam, a dorky security guard that meets an outcast named Evelyn play by the beautiful and extremely talented Rachel Weisz. They begin to go out with each other, and Evelyn begin to change Adam a little at first in his appearance and demeanor. The change slowing gives Adam the confidence he always wanted and the people in his life begins to take notice in the sudden changes in him. Then the way Evelyn continues to change Adam becomes a bit extreme, even going as far as to have him go and get plastic surgery. In true Neil Labute fashion, nothing is what is meant to be, and the reasons for the changes in Adam becomes horrifying clear in the end, and nothing will ever be the same again for him, and the people around him.This is hands down Neil's best movie since In the Company of Men. The only problem I have with the film is the fact that it can't shake off it's stage roots and some of the scenes feel too off key to be real but besides that, its as scary and as disturbing as it's predecessor. Paul Rudd is great as the low maintenance Adam, and he brings a sense of humanity to his role and a sense of mischief as well. Gretchen Mole and Fred Weller are good as his bewildered friends, but It's the phenomenal performance of Rachel Weisz, who blends a sense of danger, insecurity, and deadly smarts in her role of Evelyn that makes this film as powerful as it is. Weisz is down right riveting, and you can not take your eyes off of her. She is so good in fact that in a way, you sympathize with her character, and kind of root for her even when you know deep in your gut that she is up to no good. Her performance is worthy of an Academy Award, and in my mind will not forgotten anytime soon.
Rating: 
Summary: Just plain dumb...shock value isn't always a good goal
Review: No synopsis needed. The movie aims to shock, and it doesn't even do that well. If it was meant to open the mind then it didn't achieve that goal either.
Rating:
Summary: A must for all people who like good cinema
Review: One of the most witty films to come out this year , the shape of things describes the romance taking place between art student Evelyn ( Weisz ) and shy , museum security guard Adam ( Rudd ) . From the very beginning of their relationship Adam seems to lack the trust needed in himself . " Why do you like me ? ..." he asks Evelyn out of the blue ..."i'm nothing " . She doesn't seem to share his point of view though . The movie displays it's message loud and clear throughout it's length : it's all about the retreats we often make so that we can fit in or please the people we're with . What makes it stand out though is the fact that , for a dialogue-heavy film , it has such a striking and undeniably memorable ending in which all those initial comments about human relationships take a far more powerfull form . Furthemore , the acting is truly exceptional . Rudd with his interpid sweetness and Weisz with her fierce , underground sex-appeal create two characters equally interesting and , in their own way lovable . Overall "The Shape Of Things " is probably Labute's finest work yet . It's smart , well-perfomed and definitely entertaining - a rare piece of moviemaking without doubt .
Rating: 
Summary: Rachel Weisz is only reason to see this film.
Review: Stagy but well done adaptation of the play lacks the electricity of the live play but it still has it dark heart intact. Rachel Weisz is becoming one of the most brilliant actresses around, and she is the reason this movie works so well. Her character is evil but in a strange way, you will end up liking her anyway, and Weisz does it so great that you would not mind if she did the same thing to you as she did with Paul Rudd. Her character will leave you speechless right after the credits leave the screen. Bless you Rachel Weisz for such a great performance.
Rating:
Summary: Quirky and weird, but worth it
Review: The characters spend a lot of time obsessing and arguing about things that hardly seem worth the trouble, but there's more than enough to keep you interested. First of all, it's nicely unusual in that it's more of a play, which is what it was originally and they didn't tamper with that, yet it works well as a film; you don't find yourself wishing for more. It's basically just four characters, and you don't really need much of anything else -- just put them out there and let them go at it. Plus, as luck would have it, they're charming and attractive, which helps (actually one of the guys isn't necessarily that attractive at first, but he gets better as he goes along), and, in spite of themselves they're somehow interesting.
A major issue of the film is the question of "What is 'art'" (don't worry too much about this until you're done seeing it). To me, the question almost doesn't matter, because whether it's art or not, all I know is that I'm against it. But still, while many people find the portrayal in the movie troubling and I did too, I'm sorry but I also found it funny as hell. We don't hear this said very much, but I'm sure I'm not alone in it.
This was my first exposure to Neil LaBute, and I see that regardless of how we might feel about any particular one of his works, he's an original and interesting writer and filmmaker. You never know what you're going to get from him, except that it's going to be different than what you'd get from anybody else.
Rating: 
Summary: Rachel Weisz is great but the movie as whole is not.
Review: The shape of things is a decent movie but it feels awkward in a lot of places, and most of the dialog is a bit stiff. Rachel Weisz is probably one of the best actresses we have in our generation and she does carry this film on her back and for her performance alone, this movie gets three stars from me. The movie as a whole does not cut it in the reality department, and the whole process of Paul Rudd becoming a man was a bit ridiculous, and a bit hard to swallow because it was obvious from the get go on what she was trying to do and if he did not see what was coming, then he is much more at fault than she was because he let happen. Like I said before, Rachel Weisz is the reason I give this film 3 stars but the movie really needed to pull itself together in order for me to take it seriously.
Rating:
Summary: The shape of things to come...
Review: The Shape of Things is a four-person play translated to the big screen. Despite long, stretched out scenes and theatrical dialogue, it all works very well thanks to the energetic performances of the entire first-rate cast. The movie--based on LaBute's play of the same name and starring the same four actors from the play--is a uniquely contemporary story of love, sex, and art set in a college town, which follows the steadily intensifying relationship between Evelyn (the wonderful Rachel Weisz) and Adam (the charming Paul Rudd). As Evelyn strengthens her hold on Adam, his emotional and physical evolution discomforts his friends Jenny (Gretchen Mol back in top form) and Philip (well-acted by Frederick Weller), with unexpected consequences for all. The quartet of college-age characters deal with the conflicting human desires for autonomy and connection, truth and love, and the notion that seduction is an art, making for a clever and mean-spirited satire on life and friendship. The material is a sort of throwback to LaBute's first two movies, "In the Company of Men" and "Your Friends & Neighbors," after the bigger-budgeted, broader-canvassed "Nurse Betty" (in which he directed someone else's screenplay) and "Possession" (in which he adapted A.S. Byatt's novel). Like the first pair of films, LaBute once again homes in on an intimate group of men and women and the razor-edged sexual politics among them. Some of the behavior in "The Shape of Things" is every bit as nasty as in the other films, once again reaching the point of getting a tad bit 'uncomfortable.' Adam and Evelyn - the symbolic names are no accident - meet while he's working as a school museum guard and she literally crosses the line to spray-paint a sculpture that has had its genitalia covered. "You're cute. I don't like your hair," she tells him, and a romance is begun. Soon she's suggesting wardrobe and styling fixes and taking him to graphic performance-art happenings. She's of the art-equals-provocation-equals-truth school and butts heads with Philip, who's more of a regular-guy philistine. LaBute doesn't pretend that his source material is anything other than a play. He keeps the action divided into 10 discrete scenes, with snippets of Elvis Costello's poisoned-romance songs (the musical equivalent of velvet-sheathed knives) serving as the links between them. You must accept a certain theatricality to the material, as much of the action occurs off screen, and what's there hasn't been "opened up" so that conversations take place over multiple locations. The performances are scaled down from what they must have been in the theater, but LaBute's dialogue has its own particular rhythms that aren't entirely "realistic." And that's fine. The writing is smart, so you stick with the story on its own terms. The movie ultimately lies on Weisz's shoulders, though, as she has to convince you that Adam would give in to Evelyn's manipulations, her obvious beauty notwithstanding. And she does, her performance balancing seduction and the sense that she's one eye twinkle away from being a whack job. Evelyn is the character who would be most at home in the take-no-prisoners world of LaBute's earlier works, yet you suspect the director's sympathies might lie closest with her, or at least her inclination to shake things up. Any meaningful dissection of "The Shape of Things" must revolve around the ending, yet revealing it would be a crime against art. Suffice it to say that LaBute is interested in the way that surfaces affect our perceptions of content, and how those perceptions can, in turn, become our reality. It's harsh and mean but LaBute never loses sight of what shape he wishes this crafty story to take. In the end, his aim is true.
Rating:
Summary: High concept, poor execution
Review: The Shape of Things is based on a play, which is one strike against it from the start. Neil Labute, in adapting it for the screen, scarcely makes it into a movie at all, with the same four characters running into each other in various unpopulated and nondescript settings and having long conversations. For the first three-quarters of the film I felt like I was watching some kind of improvisational exercise from an acting class. Then, around the last twenty minutes, we find out that the movie is actually about something. This reverses the usual flow of bad-to-mediocre movies, where the high concept usually runs out of steam around the middle and the end is a complete disaster. The end of The Shape of Things is actually quite interesting, though this cannot redeem the tedium of the beginning and middle. Paul Rudd plays Adam, a nerdy museum guard who meets the attractive and enigmatic Evelyn (Rachel Weisz), a graduate art student who is about to deface a musuem sculpture. This opening scene sets the stage for most of the film; it is drawn out and talky and the actors don't succeed in conveying that they are really involved in what's going on; Evelyn doesn't seem like a fanatical avant-garde artist about to commit a crime and Adam doesn't seem especially concerned. They seem, rather, like two actors improvising dialogue that might be spoken in such a situation. The introduction of Adam's friend Phillip (Frederick Weller) and Phillip's fiancee Jenny (Gretchen Mol) mainly gives the film about an hour's worth of dialogue and superfluous (as far as the real theme is concerned) activity. Evelyn and Phillip hate each other but might actually be attracted to each other; Adam and Jenny are attracted to each other; Phillip finds out that Adam and Jenny have kissed so Phillip and Adam have a long talk; Jenny and Evelyn have a long talk...yawn. Meanwhile, Evelyn is gradually getting Adam to make all kinds of little and not so little changes in his life, from his hairstyle to his clothes. Like Labute's prior film, In the Company of Men, The Shape of Things explores the manipulation and deviousness that often characterize relationships. The problem with the present film is that it takes way too long to reveal what it's really about and sidetracks us with too many unnecessary diversions. The film actually raises some fascinating questions (again, not till the very end) about the relationship between art and real life. Finally, it asks whether the artist is some kind of Nietzschean being who is above morality. I only wish more of the film focused on these questions.
Rating:
Summary: on moralism and art...
Review: This film has been marketed as a film about seduction, and most reviewers have either swallowed that whole or taken the equally prosaic view that it's yet another display of Labute's purported obsession with people dehumanizing people (facile and totally inaccurate take, especially with regard to "In the Company of Men"). Both are abysmally wrong. In fact, "The Shape of Things" is really about art and morality, and questions whether those two words should ever be used in the same sentence. Without giving away the ending, let's just say that LaBute leans heavily towards a negative answer. The film is a disturbing celebration of the gloriously amoral nature of art at its best---that the best art is subversive, and even though truly subversive art might challenge or demolish some of our comfy assumptions, in the end those who feel most threatened by it actually post a net gain, however painful or uncomfortable the cost. The implication is that all change, regardless of the means applied, is ultimately a good thing. (NOTE: this is NOT to say that one of the characters is really all that great as an artist.) Labute's dialogue is top-notch as usual, Gretchen Mol and Rachel Weiscz are both excellent, and this film is definitely worth repeated viewings.
Rating: 
Summary: Utterly self indulgent
Review: This film is utterly self indulgent. There are plenty of things about the film that are fine, up until the end. I won't spoil what actually happens at the end for those who want to watch (although I certainly recommend against it). It is at the end of the movie, however, that the writer/director stopped make, well, I don't know, choices, I guess. It is as if LaBute got to the end and had to find a way to put the conceit behind this movie on film, and just stuttered to a halt. The substance of the conceit is interesting enough, and probably could have been execute well. But, instead, we get this self indulgent clunker. I actually tuned into this because I liked other films by Neil LaBute, but - wow! - I'll think twice in the future. On the other hand, maybe I'm being too harsh: After all, since the movie ends with the presentation of a graduate thesis project, maybe the director intended to make the end of his film look as much like one as possible.
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