Igby goes right

Mix a little Great Gatsby with a lot of Catcher in the Rye plus an extra helping of cynicism and you get Burr Steers' blunt, bleak, comical, anti-escapist yet thoroughly enjoyable film, Igby Goes Down. Steers' competent, and at times brilliant, dialogue coupled with a star-studded cast make this an enticing outlet for your entertainment dollars.

Ibgy Goes Down is, at its core, the story of awfully, horribly rich people. Ibgy (Kieran Culkin) is the misfit child of Mimi Slocumb (Susan Sarandon), wife (separated?) of emotionally destroyed Jason Slocumb (Bill Pullman). The film begins with Igby and older brother Oliver (Ryan Phillippe) watching Mimi lie comatose on her bed, eventually suffocating her with a plastic bag. So begins the sordid tale of Igby.

Actually, this is the end of the film, played first to sufficiently jar the audience into watching (or leaving should their stomachs warrant). Yes, Ibgy's story is at times brutally bleak, even grotesque—and always, always profane. Don't bring your impressionable kid sister to this flick, she'll be asking you too many uncomfortable questions about drugs, sex and the like.

But amid the moral squalor lie sympathy and feeling. Igby is one screwed up kid, and the tile of the movie comes from his days at military school when his peers would systematically beat him with mops. Igby leaves school to work for his enterprising godfather D.H. (Jeff Goldblum), and during his isolation from manipulative Mimi he meets deluded, artistic, sexually obsessed Rachel (Amanda Peet), D.H.'s current girl friend, and Sookie (Claire Danes), Igby's friend and sometime lover on break from Bennington to indulge in marijuana and ennui. When Mimi schedules Igby to be sent to another school, he hides in Rachel's apartment, creating the impetus for the rest of the film.

The movie continues in a hazy story line, essentially a disjointed string of moments requiring the audience to fill in plot holes with semi-obvious assumptions. While this is refreshing for the tried and tired genre of coming-of-age films, it does dull the film's effect. Fortunately, the acting and dialogue shore up other shortcomings. Worth seeing.

Igby Goes Down (120 min) is rated R for language, sexuality, and drug content. Visit the official website at http://www.unitedartists.com/igbygoesdown.