Less Than Zero (1987, dir Marek Kanievska) is an abomination! If you have read the book by Bret Easton Ellis you will hatethe film. For one thing they got the protagonist, Clay, all wrong- the film made him clean and caring, when in the book he's hooked on cocaine and doesn't really care very much about anything. (One thing that irritated me the most was that he was always snacking on sweets.)
They only focused in on Blair, Clay and Julian. Doing that missed a lot of significant sub-stories out like the land slide, or the mutilated dog, Clay's family and his past, the pornography, the corpse in the alley... Incredibly frustrating. I know people always say the book is better than the film, but the film was just totally different from the book. Oh and they missed out epic and significant quotes like "Is he for sale?" and "People are afraid to merge." and "Disappear Here." The only quote from the book that they did put in (the wrong place and time) was "Julian gives great head. And is dead."
The only character who was wonderful in the film was Julian (played by Robert Downey Jr). I LOVE Robert Downey Jr (he makes an excellent Tony Stark) but he was just perfect for this role. Julian was witty, sad, withdrawn and helpless. It saddened me when I heard that playing this role helped fuel Robert Downey Jr's old drug addiction. I'm pleased that he got out of that.
1 comment:
You are the first person who I've seen acknowledge the absence of the iconic quotes (and the weird placement of the one line that made it in). It's seriously crazy how different the movie is.
The book is so intentional, and poetic, and painful, but the movie bulldozes all of that. It's like they read it, didn't like it, and decided to make a movie based on how they wished the book was.
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