miguelsanchez69 Review of The Rules of Attraction

The Rules of Attraction (2002)

mediocre movie thats seriously depressing occasionally funny

[6/10 · 20 April 2003]

First, let it be known I am not one of those people who watches the "Dawson's Creek" show but I still feel this film was very misrepresented in ad campaigns. It is the farthest thing on earth from a teen comedy and actually a pretty decent film. However, some folks might take issue with the time disjointure when the Point of View shifts from character to character (this is the films attempt to adapt Easton's epsitolary novel). I get a kick out of non-linear storytelling but I think it is overused in the movie. When the film first begins and we have a doublespeed "rewind" shot similar to the one in Memento. Also the type of non-linear same instant, several POV storytelling this movie uses has been done a lot better in Run Lola Run, Go, and Lawless Heart. I thought the use of the split screen to show 2 characters walking towards each other was particularly ingenious. The script though has a problem - there are multiple plots going on and occasionally they get muddled when they appear to conflate multiple accounts in the same period of time. On the positive side - the acting in this movie's great with Van Der Beek brilliant as an "emotional vampire"There's some non-cinematic problems I had with the movie - the characters are for the most part vile and unlikable. Everything truly bad in the movie happens to the only characters most audiences would probably detests least. Granted life isn't that fair either but this movie is major-league depressing. All in all, an interesting, somewhat flawed and very depressing character study thats sometimes muddled but generally interesting.