Igby Goes Down

16 April 2015

Igby Goes Down 2002

• Director: Burr Steers
• Based on novel: no
• Cast: Kieran Culkin, Claire  Danes, Susan Sarandon, Jeff Goldblum, Jared Harris, Amanda Peet, Ryan Phillippe, Bill Pullman, Rory Culkin
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:
• Kieran Culkin  – Scott Pilgrim vs the World, Cider House Rules, Music of the Heart
• Claire Danes – Stardust, Evening, The Hours, Les Misérables, Romeo and Juliet, To Gillian on Her 37^thBirthday, Little Women
• Susan Sarandon – Emotional Arithmetic, White Castle, Thelma and Louise, Anywhere but Here, Dead Man Walking, Little Women, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Client, Romance & Cigarettes, The Exonerated, The Banger Sisters, , The Cradle Will Rock, Earthly Possessions, Lorenzo’s Oil, The January Man, Bull Durham, The Witches of Eastwick, Compromising Positions, Atlantic City
• Jeff Goldblum – Independence Day, Jurassic Park, The Fly, Remember My Name
• Jared Harris – Fringe, Sherlock Holmes A Game of Shadows, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Other Boleyn Girl, How to Kill Your Neighbour’s Dog, Happiness, I Shot Andy Warhol, Dead Man, Smoke
• Amanda Peet – 2012, Changing Lanes, She’s the One
• Ryan Phillippe – Gosford Park
• Bill Pullman – Dear Wendy, Independence Day, While You Were Sleeping, Sleepless in Seattle, Sommersby, A League of Their Own
• Why? Remember it as weirdly funny.
• Seen:  Once before. Now: April 11, 2015 

Rich bourgeois New York family. Neurotic, hospitalised catatonic father. Mega-bitchy mother. Righteous young Republican fascist older brother.

And then there’s Igby who screws up and is sent to a military academy. Where he continues to screw up and is sent to another school.  From which he runs away to New York.

Poor Igby. He fumbles and stumbles through his absurd life among the filthy rich and seriously awful people.

Claire Danes is fun to watch as Sookie, a drifting sort-of student/guru/oracle who rolls a perfect joint.

I never saw the Home Alone films but I’m quite sure that this role as a sardonically suffering Holden Caulfield clone is quite a change for Kieran Culkin.

Sookie and Igby come together. Not without complications.

Weird, yes. Funny, no.

Igby goes down. Way down. Passing one bizarre, forlorn loser after another as he falls. As they fall.

Actually it’s a very depressing film but very well acted. And rather addicting.

3 * of 5