X
- 2006
- R
- Sony Pictures Classics
- 1 h 42 m
- 2006
- R
- Sony Pictures Classics
- 1 h 42 m
Summary 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)
Directed By: Terry Zwigoff
Written By: Daniel Clowes
- 2006
- R
- Sony Pictures Classics
- 1 h 42 m
- 2006
- R
- Sony Pictures Classics
- 1 h 42 m
Art School Confidential
54
5.3
Where to Watch
Summary 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)
Directed By: Terry Zwigoff
Written By: Daniel Clowes
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 30 Critic Reviews
54
43% Positive
13 Reviews
13 Reviews
43% Mixed
13 Reviews
13 Reviews
13% Negative
4 Reviews
4 Reviews
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 30 Critic Reviews
54
43% Positive
13 Reviews
13 Reviews
43% Mixed
13 Reviews
13 Reviews
13% Negative
4 Reviews
4 Reviews
Intelligent and robust contempt has become so rare in movies that the first half of Art School Confidential is intermittently exhilarating.
Enjoyable and reprises the same dyspeptic attitude that infused "Ghost World," but ultimately it lacks its predecessor's originality and humanity.
Art School Confidential mostly just makes you feel bad - period. It puts you in a foul mood and leaves you there.
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.
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.
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.
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.
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 13 User Ratings
5.3
23% Positive
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
62% Mixed
8 Ratings
8 Ratings
15% Negative
2 Ratings
2 Ratings
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 13 User Ratings
5.3
23% Positive
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
62% Mixed
8 Ratings
8 Ratings
15% Negative
2 Ratings
2 Ratings
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