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Art School Confidential
EMAILPRINTSony Pictures Classics / United Artists

Mixed or average reviews
Based on 30 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 25 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Comedy | Drama
Written by: Daniel Clowes (also comic story)
Directed by: Terry Zwigoff
Release Date:
Theatrical: May 5, 2006
DVD: October 10, 2006
Running Time: 102 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: R for language including sexual references, nudity and a scene of violence
Starring Max Minghella, Sophia Myles, Matt Keeslar, John Malkovich, Jim Broadbent, Anjelica Huston, Joel Moore, and Scoot McNairy
Art School Confidential follows talented young artist Jerome Platz (Minghella) as he escapes from high school to a tiny East Coast art school. Here the boyish freshman's ambition is to become the world's greatest artist. (Sony Pictures Classics)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Bad Santa Crumb Ghost World
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
ReelViews James Berardinelli
This is as dark as Zwigoff has gotten - arguably even darker than "Bad Santa." And, while it's legitimate to label Art School Confidential as a "comedy," the movie is more clever than it is funny.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
The movie sputters in its later, darker passages, which by design are less audience-friendly than the earlier, satirically secure ones.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
There is a wise and understanding teacher on the faculty, played by Anjelica Huston. Defending the work of Dead White Males, she sensibly observes that when they did their best work "they weren't dead yet."
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
Intelligent and robust contempt has become so rare in movies that the first half of Art School Confidential is intermittently exhilarating.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
Enjoyable and reprises the same dyspeptic attitude that infused "Ghost World," but ultimately it lacks its predecessor's originality and humanity.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
It's far more ambitious than its predecessor and suffers from too many ideas rather than too few, making it an inspired, fascinating, and revealing mess.
Read Full Review >Village Voice J. Hoberman
Art School Confidential is replete with humorous detail--in that respect, the student art projects are particularly fine--but it's the attitude that rules.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano
If a more elegant and succinct explanation of what compels some people to go to art school has ever been filmed, I haven't seen it.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Scott Foundas
Art School Confidential reaches its dementedly brilliant peak in the company of Jim Broadbent.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
Art School Confidential mostly just makes you feel bad - period. It puts you in a foul mood and leaves you there.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin
Zwigoff has a rich comic gallery of pretentious boobs to lampoon. But his satirical target just seems too easy this time around: It's hard to spoof institutions that already veer so close to self-parody.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman
When it's on, it's really, really on. But when it's not, it feels like it's struggling to find its style, just as Jerome is.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
As the film devolved from satire to slapstick horror, I didn't believe in it at all. But in his beetle-browed intensity and tremulousness, I completely believed in Minghella's Jerome.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
There's simply nobody beneath the derisive attitude worth caring about.
Read Full Review >Slate Josh Levin
Misanthropy can be incredibly entertaining, so long as that hatred draws blood. But that extra percentage point of venom has skewed Clowes and Zwigoff's aim.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Ken Fox
This failure is especially surprising because Zwigoff not only reunited with "Ghost World's" writer, ingenious graphic artist Dan Clowes, but he aimed to satirize a rarefied sphere both know all too well: the art world.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
It doesn't help that the central character, Jerome - earnestly played by Max Minghella of "Bee Season" - is essentially a passive observer.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jami Bernard
There are two movies vying to occupy the same space here: a teen comedy about artistic pretension and academic double standards, and a darker, nastier movie about a serial killer. They share Zwigoff's trademark misanthropy, but it doesn't delight as it did in the perversely sweet "Bad Santa." Now it just feels mean.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
Like a smart-ass student clever enough to see through everyone but himself, Art School Confidential falls victim to the very clichés it wants to puncture.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky
It works for a good while--probably half of the movie.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Duane Byrge
With an "Animal House"-ish deportment, Art School likely will entertain a sophomoric audience and etch some winning college-kid figures, but art house audiences will be disappointed by its paint-by-numbers storytelling.
Read Full Review >Variety David Rooney
Despite a soulful leading performance from Max Minghella, pic feels insubstantial, echoing without equaling both the coolly ironic edge and heart of "Ghost World" and the incisive art-world outsider portrait of the director's docu feature, "Crumb."
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein
Art School Confidential exudes confidence as long as it is satirizing a questionable, at least according to Clowes, institution of higher learning. But the film loses its way with multiple subplots, becoming a hodgepodge that isn't particularly hard to follow, but, far worse, provides no compelling reason to bother.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Eric Campos
We still love you, Terry. Happens to the best of us. But, man, what a stinky load. Someone get the hose.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Dana Stevens
In spite of some acute observations and a few interesting performances (most notably from John Malkovich as Jerome's drawing teacher and the ever-reliable Jim Broadbent as Strathmore's least illustrious alumnus), Art School Confidential is a dull and dyspeptic exercise in self-pity and hostility.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
Zwigoff's overdue for a turkey, in other words. Art School Confidential is it.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
Art School Confidential, the first disappointment from director Terry Zwigoff, is all glum, dour cynicism.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
Insistently sullen, nihilistic, and successful to the point of smugness at transmitting buzzkill, Art School Confidential is the second collaboration between art-house cartoonist Daniel Clowes and director Terry Zwigoff.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine David Edelstein
Zwigoff doesn't get the tone right, and the picture goes from reasonably amusing (if crude) to puzzling to boring to (when a campus strangler enters the picture) hateful.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 6.6 (out of 10) based on 25 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
g b gave it a1:
This movie is so pitifully dull. There is nothing compelling about the central character, nor are his motivations worthy of any sympathy. There seems no point of access by which to enjoy this film.
Linda L. gave it a2:
This movie was so bad that it actually surprised me -- especially considering the "two thumbs up" and connections to the very good "Ghost World" and "Bad Santa." Enjoyably mordant observations of art-school hypocrites give way to developments (re the serial killer subplot) that are just as inexplicable as they are ridiculous.
J H gave it an8:
This is a terrific movie. It is funny, smart, and the acting and directing are wonderful. Rent this!
Chad S. gave it a7:
Jerome's hero is Pablo Picasso, so surely, there is an awareness on his part of the dead white artist's famous observation that "good artists borrow; great artists steal." "Art School Confidential" is such a sour film; even its happy ending is laced with cynicism, as Jerome's deliberate misinterpretation of Picasso's quote brings him both, personal and professional successes. The filmmaker's potshots towards art school and its banalities are screamingly funny, but at the expense of humanity(this film is for misanthropes). Chip Kidd's novel "The Cheese Monkeys: A Novel in Two Semesters" had both, the sling and the arrow, and its concentration was in art. "Art School Confidential", ultimately, is actually about film; more to the point, about genres and context. I wonder if the makers of "Brick" were inspired by this film.
Billy D. gave it an8:
I enjoyed this movie and would definitely watch it again. John Malcovich was quirky-good as usual.
Pete M. gave it an8:
While I would agree that it lacks the emotional weight of Ghost World and doesn’t quite match the freewheeling black wit of Bad Santa, Art School Confidential is still a fine entry into the Terry Zwigoff filmography. It offers a stellar satire of artists, art school, and the art world in general. At its best, it’s a razor sharp critique with lots of big laughs and smart jokes. This is one to check out if you like your comedy to have some bite.
Sam B. gave it a10:
This is a nasty little gem that skewers the grad/art school pretensions that a lot of knucklehead sycophants wrap their heads around, the only reason why it's getting such low scores is because it calls a lot of so called experts on their credentials and they're severly butt-hurt over it.
