Review: Igby Goes Down

     I try to begin my reviews with some sort of abstract concept or seemingly unrelated idea which I then connect to the movie I'm reviewing before I tell you what the movie is about and what I think about it. However, with Igby Goes Down I don't know how to start other than simply saying that I liked this movie; I liked it but I don't know why I liked it. Perhaps if I read Catcher in the Rye in high school I would be able to relate the experience of the titular character Igby to that of Holden Caufield, the main character of Salinger's classic novel. From what I have heard about Catcher in the Rye, like Igby, Caufield listlessly wanders through life, feeling dissatisfied with the people around him and has a lot of sex. But, unfortunately because I haven't read Catcher in the Rye my ability to compare and contrast the two works ends there, and I am left to tell you about the movie itself.

     Igby Goes Down follows the Igby (Kieran Culkin) during a time just before his 18th birthday. Raised in a family of old money by a psychopathic mother (Susan Sarandon) and a schizophrenic father (Bill Pullman), along with a straight-laced, young republican brother (Ryan Phillipe), Igby feels suffocated and unable to be who he wants to be in the world he inhabits. He bounces from one prep school to another and eventually ends up in military school. After a summer working to renovate a studio apartment in New York owned by his uncle (Jeff Goldblum, who, as this movie proves, should always be wearing an ascot), Igby escapes from military school and lives with his uncle's mistress (Amanda Peet), an artist who doesn't make art. While in New York Igby meets Sookie Sapperstein (Claire Danes), a college student who feels the same way about life, the universe, and everything as Igby. The main conflict is Igby's attempts to escape from the world of summer homes in The Hamptons that he was raised in, but can't seem to let go of entirely. The plot is nothing new, as I said earlier, it's something that was dealt with by J.D. Salinger, but also by almost every coming of age story since then. It's almost universal that kids, at some point in their lives, hate their family and want to escape and be their own person even when their family has given them everything they could ever want. Igby's family is incredibly wealthy, but it is the wealth that has driven them crazy and Igby refuses to be like the rest of them. 

    Kieran Culkin does an excellent job as a comic actor delivering sardonic one-liners throughout the movie, but he also is able to hold his own in dramatic scenes as well in a role that really displays his range of acting abilities. The Culkin family has become an established name in the acting community with, of course, Macaulay but also Kieran and Rory (who plays Igby at ten years old). In a cast filled with other very established actin talent it  was good to see that the Culkins can still be a presence despite some considering them past their prime. This might be true for Macaulay, who despite his lauded performance in Party Monster, will probably never be able to recapture his Home Alone glory days (there is a nice reference to the Home Alone movies when Igby is checking in at a hotel). However, I expect big things from Kieran who recently did great work in Scott Pilgrim vs The World.

The rest of the cast is equally splendid as each character has a depth to them that all of the actors are able to express, be it the hidden dark streak of Goldblum's D.H., or the brief moments of lucidity Bill Pullman conveys as he lapses in and out of his schizophrenia. However, this movie is, at it's core, a character study of Igby and Kieran knocks it out of the park.

Rating: 7/10 - Moral