Having previously seen the excellent Ghost World, I came to this film expecting more of the same offbeat GenY satire, instead what I got was a dull poorly scripted pastiche which seemed to be making a bid to become the latest member of the Scary Movie franchise and failing even in that ! A paper thin and utterly predictable plot combined with a blunt force trauma script to make this a soggy mess of a film which not even the combined talents of heavy duty thesps John Malkovich & Jim Broadbent could hold together for long. The biggest problem with this film is that it can't decide which genre it wants to be in, and in shooting for more than one misses all of its targets by a clear mile. The bulk of the the film resembles a bizarre hybrid of one of those 1980's John Hughes movies (Breakfast Club, 16 Candles, Ferris Bueller etc)with all the humour & charm surgically removed, and the scary movie franchise without the absurdist gags and movie in-jokes. And then just when you think the fusion cusine can't get any more bizarre, they throw in a couple of woefully tacked on secondary plot lines, one of which has clearly been lifted wholesale from Patrica Cornwell's dubious theories about Walter Sickert and another referencing John Wayne Gacy - and all to no obvious effect! Anybody who thinks this is dark humour is very, very wrong! Compared to the efforts of contemporaries Todd Solondz or even Keven Smith these guys are not even treading water. Do yourself a favour, if you are tempted to see this film save yourself the price of a ticket and wait until it hits the £2.99 discount racks of your local corner shop - trust me it won't take long, and at least you'll have a shiny new frisby to bounce off the wall!
Review of Art School Confidential
