just watch it!

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

This movie has the initial feel of "Harold and Maude," at least in its portrayal of a young man of privileged upbringing, hell bent on defying his parents, who are daft, overbearing or, in the case of "Igby" certifiably insane. Just two problems: one, Kieran Culkin is no Bud Cort, and two, Burr Steers is no Hal Ashby. And a third problem: if there is a plot to "Igby" I couldn't find it. Or maybe I just couldn't be interested enough to find it.There are plenty of good actors in the film -- Susan Sarandon, Claire Danes, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman -- but their characters are mostly one-dimensional. None are particularly likable, or even dis-likable. They simply exist for Igby to respond to (usually in a sarcastic, juvenile manner that does not age well). Igby himself is interesting enough for awhile, but there comes a point in a picture where the central character has do do something worth watching. Aside from a fling with Sookie, which you know from the start has no future, Igby does little but project an ironic pose. Until the end, that is, when he beats his mother's corpse. Had we seen more of that side throughout the film, this could have been an effective scene; instead it's just ludicrous.Maybe a good actor could've filled that character with more than mordant wit. But Culkin is not that actor. I can't believe he was Steers' first choice, but then again Steers must have approved the script too. He may aspire to be Hal Ashby but the Nora Ephron in him is too much to overcome.The only reason to give this movie a shot is the photography. The scenes of downtown New York, and the interior set design, are truly marvelous.

Igby is sort of like Holden Caulfield, but without a serious thought in his head. It's hard to either like or dislike the character, since we only have his cheeky one-liners to define it. The people around him are quite horrible in their own unique ways, so that kinda makes him look better, but they are basically one-dimensional manifestations of various narcissistic types. So, the setup is that Igby is your basic disaffected youth, presumably intelligent (although that is never really established), navigating amongst these jerks for most of the film. It didn't seem quite plausible that these women would be so anxious to sleep with him -- Culkin has this sort of baby-fat thing with his face, he's rather short, and he doesn't seem to do anything to warrant such instant passion. The film goes on and on, without a bit of dramatic tension, only a series of scenes that I suppose are meant to elucidate the incredible range of self-conscious egos striving for hipness in the Big Apple. There are scenes that should really draw the audience in for some emotional connection to Igby's difficulty with his parents, but once the one-liners flee the screen, so does any hope for believable drama. And there's one of the weakest endings I've seen in some time. What is most surprising is that Susan Sarandon and Bill Pullman read this script and decided they wanted to be part of this mess. Perhaps the only point is to draw attention to how many phonies there are in the world. Problem is, Holden already did that about 60 years ago.

I didn't entirely dislike this movie, but watching it after so recently rereading The Catcher in the Rye was just making me twitch. I read an IMDb user's review earlier which said something like "Igby is the modern-day Holden Caufield." That's the praise the creators of this film were looking for, I'm sure, but it's also far too on the nose. I'll refrain from including spoilers, but I will say that right from the beginning I could parallel scenes in the movie, pretty much exactly, to scenes from Catcher. Even Igby's dialogue mirrors Holden's. He repeats phrases like "I think you're great, I really do" and "that tortures me". He drinks and chain smokes. I could go on.Let's be clear here: Igby Goes Down doesn't simply pay homage to J.D. Salinger's classic novel. It doesn't stand on its own, which means it also doesn't honor its roots. It felt almost like they wanted to make a film adaptation of The Catcher in the Rye, couldn't get the rights, and said "forget it then; we'll come up with something ourselves".The mimetic protagonist made the story as a whole hard for me to swallow, but to be fair, there are plenty of unique characters in Igby Goes Down. The premise is obviously contrived, but it still makes for an okay story. If you have never read Catcher, and therefore aren't forced to draw comparisons, you will probably enjoy this movie quite a bit more than I did.

Looking back, it seems American indie filmmakers in the late 90's, early millenial were just crawling over each other to find a way of representing the more dysfunctional family. Igby Goes Down is a good movie, and has its exceptional moments, but time is already starting to drag on this one.Igby is rich, he keeps getting kicked out of school, his father is insane, he hates his mother, his brother is a "Young Republican", his Godfather is Jeff Goldblum, and he just is feeling so darned existential all the time. He runs around New York being phony (hence the thousands of people comparing him to Holden Caulfield), attends parties in which he feels alienated (hence the thousands of people comparing him to Ben Braddock), and purposefully attempts to make things awkward to get the attention of his mother (hence my comparing him to Harold Chasen). He's also a teenager's wish fulfillment fantasy as he manages to sleep with hot women who are either not concerned with having a relationship or pleasantly reject him so that he can feel more alienated, run around New York being gloomy and hep, and, well, get his parents out of the way from time to time.Hey, I'm not complaining: all of that is good justification for watching this movie. However, not all of it was all that great. One of the things that kind of ruined it for me was the character Sookie's relationship with Igby and his brother. Now, I'm sorry, but who starts relationships with two brothers based entirely on their bemoaning hatred of their mother? Really, who does that? "Oh, give me more of that angry childhood trauma, baby, you talk so sexy..." Nonetheless, most of the beginning is funny, the scene that bookmarks the movie is really cool, and its episodic structure helps it keep moving (this movie is kind of like the weather: if you don't like the scene, it will probably soon change).Anyway, cute film.--PolarisDiB