The director of Killing Zoe (Roger Avary) unites with the novelist of American Psycho (Bret Easton Ellis), to reach the combined maturity of a know-it-all sophomore (high school, not college), for a view of the modern university as a libertine's paradise of casual sex, drugs, and Nietzscheanism. It starts, you might say, with a bang: a drunken co-ed losing her virginity by rear entry in front of a camcorder, then getting thrown up on for added memorability. From there, it seldom lets up for a minute. If it's not hitting you over the head with its worldly wisdom, it's jabbing you in the ribs with its cinematic cleverness: reverse motion, split screen, pixillation, alternating narrators, and so on. The would-be uncompromising vision nevertheless seems slightly compromised (a slight understatement) by a casting philosophy in common with a TV jeans ad: a haughty Master Race of buff beauties (James Van Der Beek, Shannyn Sossamon, Ian Somerhalder, Kip Pardue, Jessica Biel, Kate Bosworth). And all that cleverness, all that worldly wisdom, cannot manage to create any distance between the observers and the observed. The moviegoer can avoid contamination by steering clear. (2002) — Duncan Shepherd
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