i'm going to have to agree with the reviewer who asked, "why, oh, why, do they let culkin act?".... my friends and i asked ourselves the same question after renting this film on a whim (the cast and plot synopsis on the dvd case looked rad). however, i've seen a ton of excellent experimental films, some good ones, some mediocre ones, and, yes, several bad ones -- and this one probably takes the cake. actually, i almost thought about knocking verbinski's "the mexican" from its perch as the #1 worst movie i had ever seen and replacing it with "party monster", but i felt so bad for seth green's attempt at salvaging this movie and his character that i placed this film at #2 out of pure pity. now, i understand the premise of the film -- and i like the premise -- i like the idea of doing it in an impressionistic, experimental, excess-laden, requiem-for-a-dream-soulless style. however, i do not think that this film was quite able to successfully create the feeling that it attempted to. culkin's performance was so mildly annoying throughout the whole film that it began to gnaw on me and my fellow filmgoers to the point where we wanted the seth green character to just kill him mid-film -- not because we hated the character culkin played (which would work in a film like this), but because the acting was so horrible, and that damned accent/giggle/blank stare of his was soooo off. just off. there was something just missing from this film in general. i want to say it just barely misses the mark, but i kind of feel like it probably misses the mark by a whole lot. my friends and i got the impression that this film was done as a favor by the actors and that not much effort or research was put into the characters, thereby creating these fake impressions -- not artificial, mind you, WHICH WOULD WORK, since the characters were supposed to be artificial (but they ended up just seeming annoying and stupid) -- but unbelievable, fake impressions of people more complex and insidious than the actors portrayed them to be. i also think that this film was poorly written, and had several time discrepancies which i would have forgiven had i thought the film was tongue-in-cheek; however, it didn't quite pull off the tongue-in-cheekiness, although i understand that it might have been going for that angle. again, nothing really materialized. i would not recommend this film for someone who is looking for a film that will make them think, or even for a good story. this is a somewhat boring and annoying film that strives for uniqueness and lunges at experimentation, and comes out sour and stupid. F-.
Review of Party Monster
