Igby

Ten out of ten. One of the greats, with memorable characters you'll think about for days. This great film got caught in MGM/UA distribution purgatory. If it could have busted out of the indy circuit from day one and gotten into general release, it would have been favorably compared with "The Graduate" and Kieran Culkin's performance with Dustin Hoffman's debut performance in that Mike Nichol's classic. MGM/UA blew it.

Culkin is a great young player with a look and resources evoking both Hoffman and Robert Downey. He's naturalistic and great to watch. Smart, funny, urbane writing by first time director Steers is never "on the nose". Yet underneath the evasive, sarcastic stripped down dialogue he pulls hard hitting emotions from his ensemble. Not a false or wasted scene and more than a few really powerful ones. Every player is at the top of their game, from Kieran Culkin to Amanda Peet, Jeff Goldblum to Susan Sarandon, Bill Pullman to Claire Danes to Ryan Phillippe. They're obviously guided by a director who knows how to work with an ensemble to get an overall tone.

Igby is the anti Ferris Beuhler - a smart wanna be who's wise mouth and attitude usually piss off those around him - his mother, his brother, his godfather. Torn between those who don't get him and those who do (Peet, Danes), Igby paints all his relationships with the same sarcastic brush, his vulnerability only busting out when he's pushed to the limit. Culkin's perfomance is not to be missed. The key women, Sarandon, Peet and Danes all play fully formed characters. Goldblum is perfect for his role, his usual facile acting style well suited to the South Hampton prince he plays; his best turn in years.

Seers has style and flow, and his final cut is aided by the excellent music choices he and his music supervisor, Nick Harcourt arrived at. Cameron Crowe couldn't do better. The Igby soundtrack is tres alt moderne and every cut is great.

Warning: Actors are blocked (brilliantly) for wide screen format. So this film will suffer from TV / video screen ratios as the Graduate does. Either go see it in the theater NOW or wait for letterbox!

I'm very pleased to see other reviewers comparing Kieran Culkin's character Jason/Igby to The Catcher in the Rye's Holden Caulfield - while watching the film I was thinking the same thing, much to writer/director Burr Steers' credit. This is THE Social Commentary movie I have been waiting to see for a long time now - fearless, witty, arch, poignant without being sentimental, and, best of all, the characters are not one-dimensional, they all live and breathe and we feel the agony they are suffering behind their socially privileged masks.

Culkin is especially brilliant (and so sad, with his Harry Potter scarf - a young wizard without any magic), but everyone shines here - Sarandon, Pullman, Danes, Amanda Peet, Ryan Phillippe, Jeff "how-can-I-be-any-creepier" Goldblum, and of course Jared Harris, who positively reeks eccentricity without even having to open his mouth (but when he does, it's always good too). A fine first film from a director/writer who definitely bears watching.

There's no question aspects of this are quite brutal. But the theme of the story dictates they would be so.

Igby Goes Down is about a kid in nowhere's land. He doesn't know where he's going in life and responds to this by being a rebel in everything. Add to this his parental instability with a schizophrenic father and a tyrannical mother and you can understand why he'd be a little mixed up.

In many ways it is a coming of age story, but in others it is too dark to be that. Indeed there is an ambivalence of themes with hope and despair featured in equal measure.

As Igby, Kieran Culkin excels. He's outstanding, the best thing in the movie - which given the quality of his peers, such as a sinister and agenda-ridden Jeff Goldblum, a monstrous and hierarchial Susan Sarandon, a confused and tortured Bill Pullman and a squeaky clean upstart in Ryan Phillippe, is no mean feat at all.

Performances are uniformly excellent, the story involving, and the themes well explored.

Well done all round.

Igby caught me by surprise; I hadn't heard much of the film before seeing it and rented it on a hunch. What a beautiful, weird, sad, funny coming-of-age story and what a cast. The performances throughout are amazing. I absolutely adore this film. 8 stars out of 10

In case you're interested in more underrated masterpieces, here's some of my favorites:

imdb.com/list/ls070242495

Susan Sarandon, Jeff Goldblum, and the kid from Home Alone (1992)...

OK, not literally the kid from Home Alone, but his twin brother...

OK, not literally his twin brother, but his brother who looks and talks exactly like him.

This is the story of what one would call the "aristocracy" of New York. The characters are the pampered, entitled, nonchalantly confident members of the wealthy class or the intelligentsia of New York.

Igby, played by Something Culkin, is a Holden Caufield-esque rich brat who hates his family. The film is mostly about him meandering around New York, meeting women, attending social events, and trying to stay away from his mother and brother, who are trying to straighten him out or, barring that, get rid of him.

He claims he hates his brother because of his political beliefs. It does indeed look like the sibling has a more uptight personality than him. It's unclear why he hates his mother, but she's shown to be domineering and uptight as well. You can essentially sum it up as a biography about an emo kid raging over first-world problems.

There are some good plot twists and you get to see Goldblum in as close to an action role as I think he's ever done. The directing is also well-done - calm, serene, and what I would characterize as "clean drama" directing.

Yet the star of the show here is the dialogue. The writer of this film could be the next Oscar Wilde. The dialogue is among the wittiest I've heard in film and the actors really deliver it and play off of each other well. It reminds me of "The Importance of Being Earnest."

Honourable Mentions: 1: OC and Stiggs (1987) is stylistically very similar in terms of the pacing and camera work. It's also similar in other regards. It's about two characters without real problems who are determined to make some up to pass the time. And they're impossibly smooth and calm while doing it.

2: Quigley Down Under (1990): A cheap white saviour action flick about an American (Tom Selleck) who saves aboriginals in Australia with a modified supergun and the skills to wield it. It has no connection to this movie except for the title which is, amusingly, very similar.