How a film as reprehensible as this ever got the green light is beyond me. I’m certainly no prude, but what’s put on the screen here is just plain bad. I can only imagine that someone somewhere thought Roger Avary -- Pulp Fiction’s co-writer -- had the wherewithal to make this supposedly cautionary tale of college-coed excess into something worthy of being considered entertainment. This film marks Avary’s second crack at directing a feature film. His debut was Killing Zoe, which wasn’t very good either, but, surprisingly, wasn’t as bad as this one. It shows that Avary is going nowhere but down, and the highlight of his career was riding on Tarantino’s coattails in Pulp’s heyday.

The Rules of Attraction is based on a novel by Bret Easton Ellis -- the same person who wrote Less Than Zero and American Psycho, which were both made into fairly good movies. Attraction’s story centers around a convoluted sexual/love triangle on an American college campus where the kids do nothing but drink, have sex, do drugs, have sex, swear, have sex, do more drugs, and then talk about sex even when they’re not having sex. In fact, the kids have so much sex in this film that when someone is having sex in open view other people don’t even notice! The thinking, I guess, is that Avary -- having being involved in Pulp Fiction and all -- could somehow transform Ellis’s racy material into something like, well, Pulp Fiction. The first problem is: Avary is no Tarantino and this material isn’t even close to Pulp Fiction. And when you can’t make a film that’s loaded with sex even remotely interesting, then you’ve got another problem. Actually, you have three problems.

Avary is the film’s biggest problem because he has no clue how to handle the material. If you can believe it, this is supposed to be some sort of cautionary tale about the pitfalls of rich-kid excess. I’ve never read the novel and perhaps the way the book was written in the book it did convey some sort of moralistic message. But I’ll ask one question: How can a film claim to be a morality tale and caution against the excesses of drugs, sex, and booze when all it does is glorify them?

If there’s one thing to redeem it, the film occasionally has some clever little gimmicks like playing backwards to return everyone to the same point in time, and a speed-of-light tour of Europe by one of the students. But most of the time it misses the mark, taking wrong turns everywhere. For example, there’s a part where a character commits suicide. I gathered that it was supposed to be a point in the story that would cause a pause for thought -- if this were actually a morality tale. Avery, though, shoots it in a style that glorifies the death! Irresponsible? Most certainly. In fact, at that point some people gave up all hope that this film would going anywhere and simply left the theater -- the right thing to do. I would have left too, but I had to write this review and I wanted to see if I could find something redeeming about the film. I didn’t; it went further downhill from that point on.

Maybe it’s too much to blame just Avary -- perhaps the studio should be held accountable too. After all, they’re the ones promoting this mess to youth and they’re using the reputation of American Psycho (by far, the best Ellis book made into a film) and Pulp Fiction (‘nuff already said) to sell it. The Rules of Attraction is quite possibly the worst film of the year and it gets a * rating -- our lowest. My cautionary message to you is: Don’t see it!

• Go Back