Igby Funny, but Goes Down
By Andy Kanak

Igby Goes Down tells the story of Igby (Kieran Culkin), a 16 year old who has been kicked out of every prep school on the east coast. His mother Mimi (Susan Sarandon) is cold to him and addicted to sedatives, his brother Oliver (Ryan Phillippe) is an equally cold young republican and his father (Bill Pullman) had a "severe" nervous breakdown when Igby was young.

One summer Igby's godfather D.H. (Jeff Goldblum) takes him under his wing until the next school semester and Igby is introduced to Sookie (Claire Danes) and D.H.'s mistress Rachel (Amanda Peet). Instead of going to school the next semester Igby runs away to New York and lives with Rachel. In New York he runs into Sookie again, and she becomes his only friend. Things come crashing down on Igby when D.H. discovers Igby has been living with Rachel, when Oliver goes to New York to retrieve him and after Sookie betrays him. Igby decides to go to California, but first helps Oliver in the killing of his terminally ill mother.

This movie has some extremely funny parts and lines.
"She's a dancer who doesn't dance, and her best friend is a painter who doesn't paint. It's kind of like a boo-hoo version of the 'Island of Lost Toys,'" Igby says of Rachel and her friend.

But Jeff Goldblum's D.H. is one of the funniest characters. He has a skewed outlook on life, saying lines like, "At the age of reason children should be provided with legal representation and a contract drawn up. All the best relationships are based on contracts."

D.H. also says, "I believe that certain people in life are meant to fall by the wayside...To serve as warnings for the rest of us...Sign posts along the way."
"Our father would be a 'slippery when schizophrenic' sign for instance," responds Oliver, "along the highway of life."
This is meant to be a funny movie. Even the killing of Mimi had the audience laughing.

And the movie had some extremely fine acting in it. Jeff Goldblum was excellent and Susan Sarandon was over-the-top, but in a good way. Kieran Culkin is capable of doing far more than Macaulay ever could. However, I had a hard time sympathizing with his Igby character. He came across as a spoiled teenager who thinks he is more important and interesting than he actually is. Even when things get very bad for Igby (and it does get pathetic) it was hard to feel sorry. Are we supposed to feel sorry for Igby?

The movie is certainly depressing at many points but has a happy ending tacked on. With the killing of his mother Igby learns some dark secrets and faces his past one last time, and so now he can go off and face his future without burden.

Writing this review was something of a problem: what is this movie really about? Is it just meant to be an unbelievable, dark comedy, or an unbelievable, dark comedy with something more behind it? Burr Steers definitely succeeded in the dark comedy part. But I'm sure he was hoping for something more, and I'm not so sure if he succeeded with that.

30 October 2002