Watching "Igby Goes Down," I couldn't help thinking how I had wasted my youth on petty things like college and waitressing when I could have done something more substantial -- such as nothing. Seventeen-year-old "Igby" (so called after a childhood teddy bear) Slocum is a master at the art of teenage loafing: between smoking and getting kicked out of one East Coast prep school after another, he doesn't do a whole lot. Girls, on occasion. Getting beaten up, sometimes. But mostly, he's stretched out on a borrowed mattress in an apartment that belongs to his godfather's girlfriend, pouting inwardly at the excruciating boredom of life.
"Igby Goes Down" is almost a modern-day version of J.D. Salinger's novel "Catcher in the Rye," but our hero is markedly less engaging than the gangly Holden Caulfield. Perhaps the main snag is that Igby is played by Kieran Culkin, an actor distinguished by his eminently high slapability factor. Perhaps it's just that writer/director Burr Steers never intended Igby to be other than totally irritating. Yet he and Holden have plenty in common, particularly sharp observational powers, coupled with rich-boy self-indulgence. But unlike Igby, Holden at least partially owned up to his shortcomings and showed a measure of sincerity toward the adults who (however misguided) tried to extend a helping hand.
Igby is much more self-destructive, but at the same time he's completely dependent on the people he professes to despise, namely his family. He'll sink without their financial and social support, but insists on mocking their generosity with tiresome pranks and escapades. When his older brother, Oliver (Ryan Phillipe), tells him, "Even Mahatma Ghandi would be compelled to beat you up," we know exactly what he means.
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