Unattractive

The Rules of Attraction

Director: Roger Avary

Cast: James Van Der Beek, Ian Somerhalder, Thomas Ian Nicholas, Faye Dunaway, Eric Stoltz, Shannyn Sossamon

Cert: 18

The indolent rich are awful.

This is a strong, if unsavoury, adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis's novel set in a small New England college where the sons of the idle rich go on their way to the boardrooms of Wall Street ... and what a ghastly bunch of time-wasters, boozers, drug-snorting skirt-chasers they are. And foul-mouthed with it!

The rich are awful.

We have here a sort of Trainspotting meets St. Trinian's meets Pulp Fiction (the last not so surprising, since Avary co-wrote that screenplay with Quentin Tarantino, and won an Oscar) and it should have been a much better effort all round.

The original novel was a powerful attack on the empty-headed off-spring of the wealthy, but somehow on-screen the sheer unattractiveness of the characters renders much of the action meaningless ... who cares about any of them?

Some of the actors - like Dawson's Creek Van Der Beek - do their best but the best they have to work with isn't all that interesting.

Star Rating: 2/5