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All-Reviews.com Movie/Video Review
Igby Goes Down
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 out of 4
Review by Susan Granger
3½ stars out of 4
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Just imagine a contemporary "Catcher in the Rye" Holden Caulfield
and you have Jason "Igby" Slocumb (Kieran Culkin), a charming, angst-ridden
rebel from a wealthy but dysfunctional WASP family in Connecticut. He's been
kicked out of several prep schools, a military academy and a drug-rehab clinic
because, basically, Igby has suffered 17 years of emotional deprivation from his
self-absorbed family. His schizophrenic father (Bill Pullman) is "recuperating
from life" in a posh rest home, his heinous mother (Susan Sarandon) is a nasty,
pill-popping hypochondriac, and his preppy older brother (Ryan Phillippe),
majoring in economics at Columbia University, resents him, noting, "If Gandhi
had to hang out with you for any prolonged amount of time, he'd have ended up
kicking the living sh*t out of you!" So Igby goes on the lam in Manhattan with
his mother's credit card, hiding out in a SoHo loft that belongs to his
godfather (Jeff Goldblum) who's betraying his oblivious wife with a
drug-addicted dancer/mistress (Amanda Peet). Then he meets cynical Sookie
Sapperstein (Claire Danes), a pseudo-bohemian, pseudo-sophisticated JAP who's
dropped out of Bennington and genuinely wants to divert resentful,
self-destructive Igby from "going down." "You're a furious boy," she tells him.
"Eventually you won't be a boy and it will eat you up." First-time
writer/director 36 year-old Burr Steers continually surprises and delights with
his quirky, idiosyncratic characters, sharp insights and saucy dialogue, so
occasional lapses of self-indulgence are forgiven in this ferociously ironic
black comedy. And the casting is flawless, as are the performances. On the
Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Igby Goes Down" is a scathing, wickedly funny
9. On his journey to self-discovery, Igby is irresistible!
Copyright © 2002 Susan Granger
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