A bald synopsis of Party Monster - gay, outrageous, drug-addled, self-centred and utterly amoral club party organiser murders his drug-dealing flatmate - simply doesn't do the film justice. In the wrong hands - and in the mainstream Hollywood hands - it could have been quite awful. But Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, who jointly wrote and directed Party Monster, get something exactly right. For this viewer at least, Party Monster hits all the right notes, and I sense that it was rather more skill than luck that it did so. In Party Monster style reflects content and content reflects style as in boring English lessons we were always told it should. But there is nothing boring about about Party Monster. Everything about it, from Macaulay Culkin and Seth Green's somewhat stylised acting to the slightly flat and washed-out garishly coloured look of the film (or was it video? - it might well have been) comes over as utterly artificial and vapid, as artificial and vapid as the lives of Club Kids Michael Alig and James St James and their followers, who compete with each other in coming up with ever more fantastical party costumes and make it clear that their lives have absolutely no other meaning than to party and ingest as many and as varied drugs as they can without killing themselves.
Elsewhere Party Monster has been criticised for not offering and explanation for Alig's character, but that is merely to miss the point by a country mile: in a sense Alig doesn't even have a character and doesn't need a character. He is what whatever he chooses to be every day, although there is no variety: he is always just a differently costumed variation on his egocentric self. There is only one passing, but important, hint at what just might be going on inside the concoction of make-up and costume fantasy: the wife of the owner of the club in which he holds his parties (the club likes it because they attract business), who is possibly the only character in the film not in the slightest drawn to Alig, tells him bluntly that he simply cannot face any kind of real life and Alig/Culkin's reaction to her blunt honesty touches a raw nerve. But he turns away and the moment passes and it is back to the artificiality of it all, the drugs, the camp banter, anything really to keep life at bay.
Despite the callousness of the murder committed by Alig and his other flatmate (they were, in fact, only convicted of manslaughter even though it is made clear that being hit over the head with a hammer several times did not end the drug-dealer's life and he is then injected with drain cleaner to see him off), the film does not judge anyone. You might argue that perhaps it should have done. I would argue that it doesn't have to: the utterly vacuous lives of the Club Kids will make it clear to everyone but the most stupid that there is nothing remotely admirable about their lifestyle. Any overt moralising would simply overegg the pudding and would have gone some way to spoiling an otherwise very good piece of film-making. The overall rating given here is, in my view, surprisingly low. I suspect that those who don't rate it as highly as I do (one review is entitled 'So bad it's good' which means someone has definitely missed the point) have taken it rather too literally. This is worth very minute of the time you should take to watch it.
Elsewhere Party Monster has been criticised for not offering and explanation for Alig's character, but that is merely to miss the point by a country mile: in a sense Alig doesn't even have a character and doesn't need a character. He is what whatever he chooses to be every day, although there is no variety: he is always just a differently costumed variation on his egocentric self. There is only one passing, but important, hint at what just might be going on inside the concoction of make-up and costume fantasy: the wife of the owner of the club in which he holds his parties (the club likes it because they attract business), who is possibly the only character in the film not in the slightest drawn to Alig, tells him bluntly that he simply cannot face any kind of real life and Alig/Culkin's reaction to her blunt honesty touches a raw nerve. But he turns away and the moment passes and it is back to the artificiality of it all, the drugs, the camp banter, anything really to keep life at bay.
Despite the callousness of the murder committed by Alig and his other flatmate (they were, in fact, only convicted of manslaughter even though it is made clear that being hit over the head with a hammer several times did not end the drug-dealer's life and he is then injected with drain cleaner to see him off), the film does not judge anyone. You might argue that perhaps it should have done. I would argue that it doesn't have to: the utterly vacuous lives of the Club Kids will make it clear to everyone but the most stupid that there is nothing remotely admirable about their lifestyle. Any overt moralising would simply overegg the pudding and would have gone some way to spoiling an otherwise very good piece of film-making. The overall rating given here is, in my view, surprisingly low. I suspect that those who don't rate it as highly as I do (one review is entitled 'So bad it's good' which means someone has definitely missed the point) have taken it rather too literally. This is worth very minute of the time you should take to watch it.