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Less Than ZeroRating:
Release Date: 03 June, 2003 Retail Price: $9.98 OUR Price: $6.99 You SAVE: $2.99! Cast: Complete Cast (13 total) |
Less Than Zero Reviews
Too scared to do drugs
I first saw this movies as an 18 year old when it came out in Australia in 1987. I initially thought it would be one of those 80's love stories with a bit of the usual soft drug use and cheesy laughs that were the staple of the time.
In reflection I now know what a mistake that was.
The drug useage , prostitution and evil consequences made me WAY sure that I wasnt doing any of that and the DONT DO DRUGS message of the times worked for me.
What amazes me is that Robert Downey Jr after making this film actually did develop a well documented drug habit etc.
Great film, should be shown to all 15-18 year olds just to let them know what can and probably does happen when you play the game and get caught up in it.
Would That Amazon Allowed Ratings of Less Than Zero Stars
I happened to catch *Less Than Zero,* a film based on Bret Easton Ellis's novella of the same name, on Bravo one afternoon. It wasn't the first time I'd seen it, but I hadn't seen it in so long that it was as if I was watching it for the first time.
I recall that the film--featuring such eighties bratpackers as the eternally pubescent Andrew McCarthy, a particularly unctious and reptilian James Spader, and, in an eerily prescient casting choice, the soon-to-be recidivist substance abuser Robert Downey, Jr. as the troubled, substance abusing Julian--struck me at the time of its release as being an important, unblinking exploration of the plight of the spectacularly wealthy, whose main problem seems to be their spectacular wealth. Watching it now, in 2004, I cannot help but think that the film's singular attraction rests in a certain lurid relish in seeing the beautiful folk of Beverly Hills plummet from high atop the ramparts of the house that Reaganomics built, and endure a series of picturesque humilations as they descend. In other words, we seek in the film the frisson of fabulous devastation.
Which brings me to my point: as cinematic tragedy, *Less Than Zero* fails utterly, because it constucts a world in which morality is almost entirely absent. The film eschews this ponderous convention altogether and opts instead for the pseudo-effects of spectacle. This choice on the filmaker's part, however, becomes deleterious to the film, reducing it to a series of gestures, poses, and set pieces of such calculated slickness that the net effect upon the viewer is one of estrangement. She sees constructed before her a demimonde of such moral vacuity as to be nearly unrecognizable. Ignoring for a moment the film's commercial enticements--the now laughably garish late-eighties couture and the various other items of conspicuous consumption--one is left with an intensely derivative film full of cliché dialogue, stock poor-little-rich-girl-and-guy types, and contrived situations. Thus, instead of eliciting our sympathy, Julian's fall from his plush aerie high above L.A. to the decidedly unglamorous back rooms in which he fellates strangers takes on all the dumb inevitability of a hurricane. We feel as if we are watching something monstruous and misbegotten that must surely collapse and suffocate on its own bulk--which, if we are totally honest with ourselves, is often our attitude when witnessing the extravagances of the filthy rich.
Hence the strategem of *Less Than Zero*: it begs the audience to supply it with the moral context it cannot itself provide. To borrow the language of of neo-Aristotelian literary critic Wayne Booth, *Less Than Zero* constructs an ideal viewer who is such a well-conditioned creature of popular culture that she will reflexively endow the film with the gravitas it itself foresakes in its pursuit of spectacle. All she must do is respond to cues: a suggestive glance, insouciant mugging, the figure of a dishevelled Julian pensively smoking on the beach. However, should this ideal viewer never materialize, or, if present, prove refractory, then the film falls on the sword of its own irrelevance. *Less Than Zero* value, then, ultimately remains historical. It remains a curious relic of a strange and sinister decade--a decade that managed to be both puritanical and decadent, consisting of strange juxtapositions (The PMRC and DIY video porn, "Morning in America" and McMartin Preschool). A decade that, despite its being characterized by gross economic injustice and insane foreign policy ("Mutually Assured Destruction"), has become quite an object of nostalgia for the under-thirty set. It will perhaps be these individuals who restore *Less Than Zero* to its glossily vacuous glory.
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