All his gifts are on display here-his charm, vulnerability, and that constant element of surprise that you always find in his best work-those little eccentricities that keep you off balance and make him so magnetic onscreen when he is fully present and has a part worthy of his talents. in a performance that deserved Oscar attention and should have immediately made him a huge star. While Clay wants to reconnect with his former girlfriend, Blair (a solid Jami Gertz), he has less interest in Julian for all the obvious reasons. All of that artifice becomes a trap, which at least one of the film’s main characters will not escape.Īround Christmastime, college student Clay (played by Andrew McCarthy) comes home to his former best friend and former girlfriend burned out and shacking up together. In the film version of Less Than Zero, there are real human beings onscreen with at least one pair of truly remarkable performances behind the garish glitz of the decadent youth enjoying the spoils of the greed decade.īecause the truth underneath is that they aren’t enjoying it at all. But as with most works of art, it’s what lies beneath what first catches your eye that matters.
That upscale exterior led some critics to criticize the film for being as empty as the novel it was based upon. Sure, there’s a lot of flash onscreen-beautiful cars, fashionable clothes, and fancy homes owned by rich white people are in abundance.
As a person who has read the novel and (obviously) seen the movie, I can tell you that only one of these works deserves its ill-regarded reputation, and it’s not the film. The film, written by first time screenwriter Harley Peyton and directed by Marek Kanievska, takes the shell of that novel and ditches almost all of Ellis’s zombie-like characterizations to create something altogether different-something human.īoth the film and the book have become pop culture artifacts that many believe reflect all that was wrong with the ‘80s in terms of cinema and literature.
To fully appreciate Less Than Zero as a film requires the viewer to understand the source material-the nihilistic novel of the same name by Bret Easton Ellis about a group of vacuous young Los Angelenos having empty sex, empty experiences, empty everything.
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