September 20, 2001
		David's Review

Igby Goes Down
(MGM/UA) Rated R
Release Date -September 13, 2002

by Ray Pride

With Igby Goes Down, which United Artists has opened in several cities, first time writer-director Burr Steers demonstrates a savage verbal wit in his jaw-droppingly mean Salingeresque black comedy of Swiftian bad manners among uppercrust Georgetown and Manhattan. Kieran Culkin is a star. Culkin plays Igby Slocumb, a sarcastic 17-year-old who hates the old money world he was born into, especially his distant, selfish mother, played with spite by Susan Sarandon, who notes "His creation was an act of animosity, why should his life not be?" Happy to flunk out of yet another school, Igby goes on the lam, hiding out at godfather Jeff Goldblum's Manhattan loft, which he keeps for smoke-blowing mistress Amanda Peet.

Steers understands wicked dysfunction, as well as emblematic behavior, such as having Goldblum goofy-grinning, literally caught with his pants around his ankles, and Peet watched by a boy and a boy-man as, bare-chested, she shaves her underarms. Then there's Clare Danes' pissy turn as older-woman Sookie "I am not a JAP" Saperstein, who provides Igby with drugs, sex and attitude. She calls him "Pavlov's pothead." Culkin seethes with conflict and confusion and, best of all, Steers does not bother to illuminate hilariously arcane references, and he’s utterly unsentimental about any number of ticklish issues, including assisted suicide. Nor does he apologize for a character taunting Igby from hiding with the chant, "Anne Frank, Anne Frank, the soldiers are gone, come out and play." While reminiscent of "Where's Poppa" and other sad, sorrowful black comedies, "Igby" is a clear-eyed original. "You're a furious boy," Sookie tells him after taking up with "fascist" older bro Ryan Phillippe, "and someday you won't be a boy anymore and it will eat you alive." For the moment, Igby lives. There’s also a nice song score, too, collated by KCRW-Santa Monica’s Nic Harcourt.