Following the success of 'American Psycho', (Well, a success in my eyes) another novel by controversial author Bret Easton Ellis is given the silver screen treatment. This time, with the co-writer of 1994's critically acclaimed film 'Pulp Fiction' as the director, surely there're enough ingredients to make this adaptation an even better one. You'd think so, but unfortunately, it doesn't work as well this time round.
Following an impressive opening of voice-overs feeding off an amusing script, with each character being singled out as the one's we're meant to root for through the excess of the voice-overs and some interesting use of slow motion footage played in reverse to show what other people are doing simultaneously, 'The Rules of Attraction' starts its very steady and very sophisticated fall into nothingness.
Despite the slightly uncanny resemblances to 'Donnie Darko' during this opening, 'The Rules of Attraction' falls away into an orgy of very basic and very primitive scenes and content that has only really been seen exploited in brainless, American teen films of the past ten years. I got the feeling this film really didn't want to be labelled one of those but yes; it's American and yes, it's 'teen' and yes, I'm afraid it's brainless. In fact it was close to being some kind of dark prequel to 'American Pie'.
What this film does is hover around its principal for far too long. We realise this film is taking a multi-strand path and with Pulp Fiction's second in command in the chair, we think it's going to be exploited rather well. To be truthful, there is no real core to this film; it's just entwining student's stories and even then, they're exploited in a rather distasteful and, to be honest, 'boring' manner. I mean; 'how many cigarettes do we have to see each character light up?' 'How many scenes have to be set at parties and how many do there have to be?' 'How many times do we have to see young couples going around pretending they're in love with each other?' According to this film: a heck load. This is the problem. There's no stability in the film. It uses the same content over and over again to try to create so many different things: Love, drama, tragedy, romance but ultimately, these things are never really in the picture and you never get a sense they will ever be with the rather bland, bored expressions the characters have on their faces.
The comparisons with American Psycho are always going to crop up, mainly due to the fact Patrick Bateman's brother stars in this film. He tries to take on a similar persona but in the end, you get no real feeling that they're related at all. All that Van der Beek (Bateman) does is pull a couple of funny faces, uses an alias once or twice and just gets into general mischief due to his drug selling business. In American Psycho, his brother Patrick does his killings through hate and jealousy and what made it even more powerful was the fact he was the only one that did it as everyone else could contain themselves. Here, everybody gets all uptight over each other. Love is the problem and when love is the issue in the film, the term 'rom-com' springs to mind.
With no likable characters at all and only one or two funny scenes that stand out, those being the dinner table scene involving a drunk gay character in front of his mother and his mother's friend with the other being the riotous montage we are shown of one character's Eurotrip (Which was probably all made up due to the amount of women he said he pulled), 'The Rules of Attraction' doesn't hold up during the space of its runtime and doesn't seem to even end correctly.
Following an impressive opening of voice-overs feeding off an amusing script, with each character being singled out as the one's we're meant to root for through the excess of the voice-overs and some interesting use of slow motion footage played in reverse to show what other people are doing simultaneously, 'The Rules of Attraction' starts its very steady and very sophisticated fall into nothingness.
Despite the slightly uncanny resemblances to 'Donnie Darko' during this opening, 'The Rules of Attraction' falls away into an orgy of very basic and very primitive scenes and content that has only really been seen exploited in brainless, American teen films of the past ten years. I got the feeling this film really didn't want to be labelled one of those but yes; it's American and yes, it's 'teen' and yes, I'm afraid it's brainless. In fact it was close to being some kind of dark prequel to 'American Pie'.
What this film does is hover around its principal for far too long. We realise this film is taking a multi-strand path and with Pulp Fiction's second in command in the chair, we think it's going to be exploited rather well. To be truthful, there is no real core to this film; it's just entwining student's stories and even then, they're exploited in a rather distasteful and, to be honest, 'boring' manner. I mean; 'how many cigarettes do we have to see each character light up?' 'How many scenes have to be set at parties and how many do there have to be?' 'How many times do we have to see young couples going around pretending they're in love with each other?' According to this film: a heck load. This is the problem. There's no stability in the film. It uses the same content over and over again to try to create so many different things: Love, drama, tragedy, romance but ultimately, these things are never really in the picture and you never get a sense they will ever be with the rather bland, bored expressions the characters have on their faces.
The comparisons with American Psycho are always going to crop up, mainly due to the fact Patrick Bateman's brother stars in this film. He tries to take on a similar persona but in the end, you get no real feeling that they're related at all. All that Van der Beek (Bateman) does is pull a couple of funny faces, uses an alias once or twice and just gets into general mischief due to his drug selling business. In American Psycho, his brother Patrick does his killings through hate and jealousy and what made it even more powerful was the fact he was the only one that did it as everyone else could contain themselves. Here, everybody gets all uptight over each other. Love is the problem and when love is the issue in the film, the term 'rom-com' springs to mind.
With no likable characters at all and only one or two funny scenes that stand out, those being the dinner table scene involving a drunk gay character in front of his mother and his mother's friend with the other being the riotous montage we are shown of one character's Eurotrip (Which was probably all made up due to the amount of women he said he pulled), 'The Rules of Attraction' doesn't hold up during the space of its runtime and doesn't seem to even end correctly.