Rent The Rules of Attraction (2002)

depressing view of university love - The Rules of Attraction review by CP Customer

All the characters in this movie are self-centred, screwed up and searching for love. The 'American Psycho' is indirectly referenced as a brother of one of the main characters. Interesting in terms of the philosophical discussion it will insight about everyone's university days but every scene is painful to watch as characters go from one sordid sexual encounter to the next. It is sexual coming of age story that I am glad mine in no way resembles.

A monotonous & boring look at spoilt US college kids that I switched off after 40 minutes - The Rules of Attraction review by TB

Brett Easton-Ellis first exploded into the literary world with Less Than Zero in 1985. A story of completely no-holds-barred & uncensored depravity, it quickly became a cult novel as well as a best seller. It also firmly established Easton-Ellis's vicious & satirical view of the world, along with the characters he created. Other novels followed, including American Psycho, looking at this brutal vision of his from different angles.

Obviously, when it came to adapting the novels for films, there were mixed results. The greatest of these, as well as my own personal favourite (it went straight into my top 10 films of all time, where it has stayed & will never be beaten,) was American Psycho. Featuring a masterful, incredible performance by Christian Bale, it was also highly successful as well as becoming a cult behemoth.

However, the real star of the film is Mary Harron, who took the novel, it's themes & story, then used those to craft her original script (along with Guinevere Turner,) into the masterpiece I love. If you had tried to literally film the novel with all the various characters & their idiosyncrasies, it would have been a very different & fairly repellent film.

And that is the problem with The Rules of Attraction.

In the 40 minutes I watched it, I was shown a conveyor belt of the stereotypical Easton-Ellis characters, each given their own montage & look into their back-stories. They are all loathsome, spoilt rich kids who are indifferent about the world around them, with no charm or anything even remotely likeable. The film itself is almost an exercise in tolerating the worst society can produce being paraded in front of you & challenging you to in any way relate to or want to follow their journeys.

Gone is the charm or humour in watching these creatures live their lives (although there were a couple of bitingly funny lines,) instead being thrown into a cesspool of revolting acts (within the opening 10 minutes, a woman is raped & her rapist sick over her, whilst another man voyeuristically films this; whilst this is happening, the woman provides a dull, disinterested narration of this.)

After 40 minutes, I just found myself thinking that I really had no interest in wasting any more of my time watching this garbage. When done right, antiheroes can be some of the best protagonists in films (such as American Psycho...) But when this is not done well, you just find yourself having to spend time with people who in real life you would cross the road not to be in the same street as them.