Review of The Rules of Attraction (2002) by Garciaesmy97 G — 28 May 2010

It ain't like the book, part two.

After reading Less Than Zero, I decided I needed to read all of the other stuff Bret Easton Ellis wrote. I read Less Than Zero in like... 3-5 days. I read The Rules of Attraction in less than 20 hours.

So, does the movie compare? Of course not. It lacks the nuances that made the book so traumatizing and compelling. A lot of story beats are either glossed over, or changed for no apparent reason. In fact, because the movie is only 100 minutes, too little time is spent with the three leads, so that none of them are properly developed. The book, on the other hand, spent enough time with them that you felt like there was no one true star of the story.

But uh, again, I'm reviewing the movie, not how faithful it is to the source material.

I'd say the film is pretty accurate in its portrayal of college life, at least the seedier aspects of it. I'd also say the dialogue is done well, and the acting is pretty fine, too.

It's the style that makes this watchable, and even likable. The editing techniques on display to convey the sense of three different perspectives of one simultaneous event are flashy, but they're slick, and very well done. The Victor sequence is 100% of what the sequence was in the book, and I think is actually better.

Apart from that, and apart from the retarded book-to-screen problems (I wish I could have read the book, erased my memory, seen this, then restored my memory of the book), I think the movie's biggest flaw is the pacing. Like Less Than Zero, I understand a lot was cut out, but this movie seems to sometimes be more concerned with adapting certain sequences than giving us characters we want to follow. I'm sure people who didn't read the book won't pick up on this problem, but I actually think putting the characters first, and the adaptation second would have been better. Like I said before, there's too little time spent with these people, so that some (especially Paul) feel too underdeveloped for me to care about them.

But, you know, it's quite entertaining, and the three leads, as underdeveloped as they are at times, are compelling and likable, and they're memorable on their own, even compared to their literary portrayal.

It sounds like I didn't like this that much, but I did enjoy it. It's almost worth watching for the Victor sequence alone. That part's fucking brilliant.

So I guess, even though the whole of the movie isn't fantastic, some of its parts are.