Igby Goes Down


Artykuł pochodzi z pisma "Guardian"

There are some droll performances here from Jeff Goldblum and Susan Sarandon: reliably blue-chip commodities on any cast list. But this shrill, callow coming-of-age comedy still leaves a strange taste in the mouth, with its self-consciously hip New York settings and its richer- and unhappier-than-thou characters. Writer-director Burr Steers unblushingly compares his work to The Catcher in the Rye, but it's as close to JD Salinger as Earth is to Alpha Centauri.
The leading character is Igby, played by Kieran Culkin, mouthing the dialogue competently enough: a mixed-up teenage rich kid with a haughty pill-popping mother (Sarandon) and a decent dad (Bill Pullman) who has been institutionalised following a breakdown. Igby has an older brother, Oliver (Ryan Phillippe), who is supposed to be rightwing and obnoxious, and heaven knows no one delivers obnoxious like Ryan Phillippe, but Oliver's not obviously more obnoxious than the supposedly adorable young hero whose smug self-pity seems impregnable.
Delinquent Igby flunks out of military school and sundry other last-chance academies, and hides out at a Manhattan loft apartment owned by his worldly, amusing godfather Jeff Goldblum, and here Igby gets to have bittersweet sex with attractive older women on his way to a cathartic showdown with his dying mother. Before this can happen, though, Igby winds up involved in drug running, making a delivery to his old art teacher - a medium-cool comic effect for which the movie perfunctorily indemnifies itself with the statutory hospital scene where a tragic, beautiful girl has an OD near-thing.
Igby Goes Down is a middlebrow, ersatz-smart movie, lacking both heart and any plausible psychological insight. It really makes you appreciate the films of Wes Anderson, and, come to that, Gary Winick's forthcoming comedy Tadpole: all of them funnier, sweeter and more genuinely sophisticated.


VOCABULARY:
bittersweet - słodkogorzki

callow - smarkaty, niedoświadczony

cathartic - związany z katharsis, oczyszczający wewnętrznie

commodities - artykuły, towary,

delinquent - przestępca, winny przestępstwa

to deliver - dostarczać

droll - śmieszny, zabawny

ersatz-smart - ersatz - namiastka, smart - inteligentny

to flunk out - oblać egzamin, wylecieć

haughty - hardy, pyszny, wyniosły

impregnable - niezachwiany, niewzruszony, bez skazy

to indemnifie - kompensować, wynagradzać

loft - poddasze, strych, piętro

middlebrow - banalny, pospolity

to mouth - deklamować, wymawiać z przesadą

obnoxious - obrzydliwy, odpychający

perfunctorily - powierzchownie, płytko, pobieżnie

pill-popping - uzależniona od leków

plausible - prawdopodobny,

rightwing - prawicowy

showdown - odsłonięcie, odkrycie, wyjawienie zamiarów

shrill - ostry, piskliwy, uciążliwy

smug - zadowolony z siebie, arogant

statutory - dosł: ustawowy, statutowy

sundry - różnorodne

unblushingly - bezwstydnie

worldly - światowy


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