Art School Confidential

I don't understand why this movie has attracted negative reviews. When I saw it the audience - including me - was laughing out loud. Sure, it isn't the cleverest film ever but it is unfailingly entertaining. The performances are great and the script is witty. The point is that Jerome can draw but is no great artist so from the beginning is never going to achieve his ambition to be Picasso. He is as much of a stereotype as everybody else. It is stated right from the start that everybody is a cliché - and ain't that the truth? We are all clichés. As Malkovich explains in the beginning art students are almost guaranteed disappointment. The audience isn't supposed to sympathise with Jerome - if you think you are then you have missed the point.

The beginning of this movie was hilarious. Jerome goes to art school and meets zany characters, including his gay roommate, his wannabe filmmaker roommate, and his art teacher (played by John Malkovich). The dialogue was witty. The audience loved the satire of modern art, because we all know how ridiculous modern art can be yet we must be polite and insightful when looking at it. Everyone could relate to the perverted college humor. Unfortunately, all this silliness ended. Right in the middle, the movie took a turn of tone and with it took the refreshingly simple but fun plot.

Art School Confidential suddenly became serious about its characters, including the mysterious strangler. The decision to transform the movie into a serious mystery was it's major flaw. With this move, the writers felt they had to incorporate a more confusing plot to achieve a mysterious tone. By the end, the initial idea of simply amusing the audience was lost because of the poorly-crafted mystery, leaving the audience disappointed.

Why do filmmakers do this? They think because we have paid to see an indie movie, we want an obscure plot twist topped off with an unresolved ending. It's like having ice cream, fun and simple, then someone comes over and adds a twist of lime and tops it off with crab apples! Obscure, but no fun because it tastes weird and you were content with the ice cream by itself. I recommend the first hour of this movie.

What's fascinating about the films of Terry Zwigoff is the relativity contained within--for as shockingly vulgar, tasteless, and non-PC a punchline can be, it is made funny because we have seen the characters in some form in our own lives, and ultimately empathize with their plight (the self-loathing mall Santa of "Bad Santa"; the disaffected teenage girls of "Ghost World"; the hopeless introverted romantics of "Art School Confidential"); instead of pointing a mocking finger and getting a laugh at someone else's expense, Zwigoff's humor hits a note that insists "we've all been here before, and we can laugh about it." His films also possess an underlying sincerity (and humanity) that goes unseen in the over-confident Hollywood claptrap that stinks up theaters nowadays.

"Art School Confidential," Zwigoff's second collaboration with cartoonist/screenwriter Daniel Clowes ("Ghost World") is another modest coming-of-age film of subtle implication. The world of Strathmore College, an art school located in the inner city, is presented as a heavily-satirized den of losers, where Jerome (Max Minghella) is looking to become, in his words, "the greatest living American artist." He rooms with obnoxious film student Vince (Ethan Suplee), who is working on an amateur film about a rash of on-campus murders, naively romances pretty art model Audrey (Sophia Myles, "Underworld"), and is given tragic (yet hilarious) words of wisdom by Jimmy (Jim Broadbent), a burned-out alcoholic and former student. When met with disenchantment and disappointment over the pretentious students and the professors (including John Malkovich, who does a funny reprise of his "Shadow of the Vampire" persona) who ignore his work, Jerome hatches a self-destructive plot that eventually--through ridiculous circumstances we believe anyway--lands him in prison.

While "Art School Confidential" sometimes seems at the mercy of far too many subplots, the eclectic group of art students and wayward adults are so wonderfully depicted (even if more than a few are outright bastards) they make the film irresistible. Zwigoff's films often come off as pleasant anachronisms of cinematic technique--his lovers always bear more in common with the stars of early cinema than their magazine-friendly counterparts; yet at the same time, he can pull more hilarity out of a truly tasteless joke than any other director working today (the best go to Suplee and Joel More). Directors who attempt this kind of crude/sensitive balance usually fail--Zwigoff, however, is both in touch with his inner romantic and child. The end result of "Art School Confidential" is intelligent, bitingly satirical, magically romantic, and filled with irreverent hilarity.

Terry Zwigoff presents you true art and the meaning of art, both Viusal and Film.It sure is pain in the ass and no one can better explain that to you than this film.

The film is about a young teenager trying to pursue a career in Art in an art school.But before he can do so, he must learn a few things about what art really is.His obsession to art school and his vision combine with the teachers minds who pretty much spend their whole time relating art with life.And in a art school where amateur art is more appreciated than professional,visionary art.But soon when he meets a women , his life takes a turn.Though,he has a nemesis to face to win the girls heart.Apparently,the nemesis' work,which is just plain childish according to our hero,is widely appreciated.So the competition begins.But as he desperately tries and loses,and gets advices from a drunken ,washed out,but talented artist,he drifts himself apart from art.But things take a big change for our depressed,lost hero,when he is gets involved in a murder mystery ,where he is the primary suspect.

Art school confidential has ideas.Lot's of intriguing offbeat ideas.And while it tries to be funny and offbeat but it fails in the end.Tries to make a successful satire out of art,but it fails to churn up even one great laugh.And it's boring at times,it just dangles around emphasizing what art really is, without actually telling us what it really is.It just mingles and experiments with the concept of art and tries to make something out of it ,pretty much throughout the film.It's characters slowly become pathetic and uninteresting.It's situations becomes absurd and pointless.It just disappoints.

But despite all that,it's fun.It sure is entertaining,but it could've been really big if any of the filmmakers even tried once.And when the plot shifts to its murder mystery,it gets even worse.It's something I didn't expect.It's got a few good moments,but it's not enough for a premise like this.The film daringly tries to make a point by shouting out loud that art schools suck.They're waste of time and just there to rip you off your cash.The students are taught by a bunch of old failures trying to make a living passing on their failures to the new generation.

It would've been better as a satire than an attached murder mystery.I mean,there's nothing wrong with the murder mystery drama thing,but I just wanted to see a proper satire here.Instead of some predictable resolution to the whole mystery.It's got some good twists and turns ,but in the end it's all too obvious.It's half baked as a love story ,and neither is it emotionally touching.Way too contrived and convoluted unintentionally.Too jumbled up.

With the exception of Broadbant,the rest of the cast is just fine.Minghella tries but can't be more than average,although he gets the character's depressing sadness.Malkovich is just a waste of talent and one would expect a lot from him.

As original as it tries to be,in the end it goes for the conventional ending.The writer,who is adapting his own book,just has no clue what he's doing and what he wants to convey most of the times.The writer focused more on the comic elements of the film rather than finding a way to solve the mysteries of the plot that can hardly fit the way it is written.It sometimes feels disconnected from the material, I mean at times you feel like watching different short movies in one film with same actors in different situations and hardly relate to the story.And the director seems to go along with it,giving us as much entertainment and fun out of it as he is able to.

This film at times becomes hard to watch as it mixes so many elements that if succeeded in mixing them well,it could have achieved remarkable result.But that is not the case in this satire. Mixing social satire, art school satire,a wicked love story, murder mystery ,and attempting to bring about a coming-of-age story.This doesn't work.

It can stand out to be a different approach, even if it's not fully successful ,it still succeeds on entertaining you.With a cop-out ending.

For all the true artists out there this film is your lesson.Perhaps.

Terry Zwigoff made one of my favorite movies - Ghost World. This one can be considered a sequel of sorts. Except, it's backwards: instead of commiserating with the young adult "misfits" in the world of "normal" people, it now laughs and satirizes them in a setting where their greatest concentration can be found - an art school in New York. In a farce-like setup it goes from student to student and ridicules them for all the "non-conformity" clichés that they are, while staying fully aware of being one big cliché itself - and landing the mandatory slaps on the "suburbia" and the "normal world" as well.

But this is where it fails: it lacks any subtlety. What was great about Ghost World, what was its main superiority over Art School Confidential, is that it had enough subtlety to stay an engaging, deep movie, while this comes off more like a flick-for-fun. It's as if Zwigoff decided to do exactly what's expected of him and serve it in a transparent glass box for people like me - who would enjoy the movie tremendously nonetheless, but regret everything it's so obviously missing. Oh - and unfortunately for me, I felt like much of the "art-school" topic has already been depicted very well very recently, in the HBO's Six Feet Under.