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83The cast is a pitch-perfect assemblage of pretty young things, but James Van Der Beek, as a slit-eyed dorm stud, proves that he can be an actor of cruel force.
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80It's so playful, wicked and unseemly, by the time you realize that the actual plot of this brilliantly sordid satire hasn't started, the party is already over.
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80Rules needs that dose of hilarity. Ellis' satire, filtered through Avary's harsh lens, is hard to stomach, harder to ignore.
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80Propelled by a fine Tomandandy score and a savvy assortment of seductive new-wave hits, Attraction is top-notch trash, a guilty pleasure designed for the decadent 14-year-old in everyone.
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80Sex, drugs and rack 'n' ruin; pretty people doing nasty things to one another...honestly, what more could you want in a movie?
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75At times darkly funny and at other times depressingly tragic. It's safe to say there aren't any movies out there quite like this one.
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70Further proof that so-so books often make better movies than good ones.
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70Roger Avary's crisp adaptation imbues the copious bad sex and general befuddlement of Bret Easton Ellis's solemn, echt '80s Bennington novel with a playfully obnoxious energy that is often funny and -- almost fun.
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70For all its kinetic energy, for all its camera tricks, for all its dark humor, there's still something a bit off about these Rules, and it's not really Avary's fault.
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70The movie feels more like a walk across campus than a movie. That's so depressing. On the other hand, each of these lost children is really looking for the same thing, ol' Mr. Love.
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70Oddly compelling.
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70Actually I quite enjoyed the film -- but how do I get rid of this awful discharge?
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63If there's one thing Avary gets right, it's the brutal use-or-be-used approach to interpersonal relations that Ellis laid out with numbing detail, and James Van Der Beek is down to the challenge as Sean Bateman: horndog, cokehead, ceramics major, and all-around jerk.
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60Gets an ambitious, sometimes inspired but ultimately less than satisfying screen treatment from Roger Avary.
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50There is no entry portal in The Rules of Attraction, and I spent most of the movie feeling depressed by the shallow, selfish, greedy characters. I wanted to be at another party.
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50Some of its parts are nifty, but the sum of these parts is nothing.
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50Hollow and pointless.
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50Although it would be understatement to call their characters unsympathetic, Van Der Beek and Sossamon play their parts with such doomed passion that they have some affecting moments.
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50Opens on a display of humiliation and human degradation at its worst and then rewinds, like a video surfer zipping back to replay a favorite scene, to the nominal beginning of the spiral.
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42It's a small-minded and jejune film, and it feels strangely out-of-date considering how loaded it is with right-here-right-now signifiers.
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40The big screen has a very difficult time capturing the talent of James Van Der Beek - literally. The aspect ratio of projected film simply cannot accommodate the full breadth of his enormous melon head.
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40The harder the movie tries to shock, the shriller it rings.
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38Juices up the visuals with fancy camerawork and split screens, but it can't distract enough from the vulgarity of the material.
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25Most of the characters are one-dimensional, and Avary's over-the-top directing doesn't make them interesting for more than a few isolated moments.
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25Looks and feels like a bad imitation of "Trainspotting" without any of that film's wit or charm.
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Nearly every bodily fluid makes an appearance in "Rules," a mean-spirited paean to hedonism set at an East Coast college where students attend class only occasionally, and then only to perform oral sex on instructors.
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25Some movies just bring out your inner Matlock: a desire to grab young punks by the lapels, smack them against a wall, knock their cigarettes to the ground and wipe the sneers off their faces. Such is the case with the callow and cynical The Rules of Attraction.
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25Avary has taken a pig's ear of a book and turned it into a pig's ear of a movie.
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25And what of Roger Avary, the writer who shared the Academy Award for writing with Tarantino? He continues to plummet toward oblivion with The Rules of Attraction, which ranks with the Great Pyramid of Khufu as a monument to self-indulgence.
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20Ugh. The Rules of Attraction is the kind of movie that leaves vague impressions and a nasty aftertaste.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 33 out of 46
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Mixed: 0 out of 46
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Negative: 13 out of 46
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RicardoR.10
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ChelseaE.10
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JohnF.9