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Less Than Zero
Fox // R // March 5, 2002
List Price: $19.99 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
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The Movie:
While I've never seen this film before or read the Bret Easton Ellis novel on which it's based, I had that sinking feeling that I usually have about midway through most film adaptations of novels: the book has to be better than this. The events of the film feel as if they're compressed and pointless, while it doesn't help that 2/3rds of the leads aren't exactly the best choices for their roles.
The film stars Andrew McCarthy (yes, of "Mannequin" fame) as Clay, a college Freshman who has returned home to Los Angeles for the holiday break. His old girlfriend Blair (Jamie Gertz) is now a fashion model with a nasty drug habit and his old friend Julian is a failed record producer with an even worse drug habit that's sending him on a downward spiral and getting him in serious trouble with a local dealer (James Spader, fellow "Mannequin" star).
The film suffers from the McCarthy and Gertz performances, as both of whom seem to have limited ability to convincingly deal with dramatic moments. Downey, Jr., on the other hand, overplays nicely and provides a noticably stronger effort than the other two. Still, it's difficult to care about any of the leads as their existence that the film follows essentially is jumping from drug-heavy party to drug-heavy party; about an hour worth of this seems endless, livened only slightly by Edward Lachman ("The Limey", "Virgin Suicides")'s vivid cinematography, which captures the dated, veerrry 80's look and fashion well. The wall-to-wall soundtrack is, at first, entertaining and then starts to occasionally become irritating as it keeps underlining most sequences.
Overall, this really seems as if it could have been a mildly enjoyable picture, but it's really sidelined by the Gertz and McCarthy performances as well as a screenplay that gives little depth to the characters.
The DVD
VIDEO: 20th Century Fox gives "Less Than Zero" a particularly good 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen presentation. While some specks and the occasional mark on the print used take away from the image quality, the transfer otherwise looks quite nice. Sharpness and detail are very good throughout the film; while some of the interior scenes appear slightly softer, the majority of the picture looks crisp and well-defined.
Aside from the instances of print wear, there were hardly any other major concerns. No pixelation was visible and only a couple of instances of very light edge enhancement were seen. Colors remained quite wonderfully presented, as the film's vibrant color palette looked well-saturated and bright throughout.
SOUND: Fox presents the film with a Dolby 4.0 soundtrack that generally is very enjoyable. The film's soundtrack is really the only element that gets distributed to the surrounds - otherwise, the film is completely dialogue-driven with few other ambient touches.
MENUS: Very basic film-themed images serve as backgrounds.
EXTRAS: A group of trailers and TV spots are the only extras.
Final Thoughts: A film that might have worked at least mildly well is almost completely sidetracked by two particularly bad performances from McCarthy and Gerz. Fox's DVD edition provides good audio/video quality (as well as a low retail price), but little in the way of supplements. I'm not complaining much about that last part, though - although an Ellis commentary discussing what he thinks of the film might have been entertaining.
The Movie:
While I've never seen this film before or read the Bret Easton Ellis novel on which it's based, I had that sinking feeling that I usually have about midway through most film adaptations of novels: the book has to be better than this. The events of the film feel as if they're compressed and pointless, while it doesn't help that 2/3rds of the leads aren't exactly the best choices for their roles.
The film stars Andrew McCarthy (yes, of "Mannequin" fame) as Clay, a college Freshman who has returned home to Los Angeles for the holiday break. His old girlfriend Blair (Jamie Gertz) is now a fashion model with a nasty drug habit and his old friend Julian is a failed record producer with an even worse drug habit that's sending him on a downward spiral and getting him in serious trouble with a local dealer (James Spader, fellow "Mannequin" star).
The film suffers from the McCarthy and Gertz performances, as both of whom seem to have limited ability to convincingly deal with dramatic moments. Downey, Jr., on the other hand, overplays nicely and provides a noticably stronger effort than the other two. Still, it's difficult to care about any of the leads as their existence that the film follows essentially is jumping from drug-heavy party to drug-heavy party; about an hour worth of this seems endless, livened only slightly by Edward Lachman ("The Limey", "Virgin Suicides")'s vivid cinematography, which captures the dated, veerrry 80's look and fashion well. The wall-to-wall soundtrack is, at first, entertaining and then starts to occasionally become irritating as it keeps underlining most sequences.
Overall, this really seems as if it could have been a mildly enjoyable picture, but it's really sidelined by the Gertz and McCarthy performances as well as a screenplay that gives little depth to the characters.
The DVD
VIDEO: 20th Century Fox gives "Less Than Zero" a particularly good 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen presentation. While some specks and the occasional mark on the print used take away from the image quality, the transfer otherwise looks quite nice. Sharpness and detail are very good throughout the film; while some of the interior scenes appear slightly softer, the majority of the picture looks crisp and well-defined.
Aside from the instances of print wear, there were hardly any other major concerns. No pixelation was visible and only a couple of instances of very light edge enhancement were seen. Colors remained quite wonderfully presented, as the film's vibrant color palette looked well-saturated and bright throughout.
SOUND: Fox presents the film with a Dolby 4.0 soundtrack that generally is very enjoyable. The film's soundtrack is really the only element that gets distributed to the surrounds - otherwise, the film is completely dialogue-driven with few other ambient touches.
MENUS: Very basic film-themed images serve as backgrounds.
EXTRAS: A group of trailers and TV spots are the only extras.
Final Thoughts: A film that might have worked at least mildly well is almost completely sidetracked by two particularly bad performances from McCarthy and Gerz. Fox's DVD edition provides good audio/video quality (as well as a low retail price), but little in the way of supplements. I'm not complaining much about that last part, though - although an Ellis commentary discussing what he thinks of the film might have been entertaining.
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