MovieChat Forums > Art School Confidential (2006) Discussion > a great movie - why has it gotten such p...

a great movie - why has it gotten such poor reviews?

posted 19 years ago by drudolph8
50 replies | jump to latest

After viewing Art School Confidential, I am as perplexed by the critical bashing it has received as I was by the near unanimous praise for such recent mediocrities as United 93, L'Enfant and Thank You For Smoking. According to rottentomatoes.com, Art School Confidential has received 32% positive reviews (2% less than Scary Movie 4 !?!). It's all the more strange when you consider that the creators' previous effort, Ghost World, a film very similar in tone, style, and quality, was critically lauded. While some of the characters in ASC may be overdone (the film student and Broadbent's), it's a hilarious, truthful and even moving film. I'd have to see Ghost World again to determine which is better, but ASC is certainly right up there. I notice that much of the criticism has focused on ASC's supposed misanthropy, yet it seems that Thank You For Smoking was praised for the very same thing. Could it be because TYFS ridicules corporations, politicians and do-gooders, while ASC mocks artists and academia(whom critics identify with)?

[–] JyLx 18 years ago

I really thought the first half of the movie was pretty well done.
But imo it went really downhill when Jerome started to get all EMO and the whole Jonah subplot.

And about your note on Scary Movie 4, note that the average rating for this movie on RT is 5.4 compared to SM4's 4.7. I think that shows that it's generally accepted this is a better movie, but it's target audience isn't as large as a Scary Movie movie.
Remember that Rotten Tomatoes' ratings system is an average of all the critics' saying either yes or no. There's no room for "well It was ok, I would recommend to some people but not others" thing at RT, simply "Fresh: This movie is worth watching" or "Rotten: Do not watch this movie".

This movie was far from fresh, making fun of the pretensioness of the Art World isn't new, but still I found it entertaining for a while.

[–] tonysboy1977 18 years ago

i agree with the original poster that united 93 was the biggest nothing i ever saw the acting sucked and it was just bad all around where as i liked TYFS.but i agree that ASC should have got way better reviews than united 93.ASC was just a wonderful romantic art like love story to me anyway.

[–] jallen107 18 years ago

it wasn't much of a love story. In fact, it wasn't much of any kind of story, and in a bad way.

[–] rdsla 18 years ago

I started out enjoying the movie as a witty, ironic look at Art School. I thought the roommate Bardo was hilarious as Jerome's "guide" to art school, and looked for the plot development that would carry the story to some sort of meaningful ending, whether good or bad. But it seemed like there was no clear meaning, the story kind of meandered between art, and the craziness of Jimmy, and the beautiful Audrey, and the various other colorful characters. The surprising shift to the dark ending seemed odd, so we got the ending which seemed fake and forced. Like now Jerome is happy that he is famous....and Audrey now likes him because he is famous....and a "bad boy"....but what does it have to do with art???
I am disappointed as I loved Zwigoff's Ghost World and Crumb. I still liked this movie, on balance, but think it didn't fulfill its potential. Could have been much better. Should have been rewritten.
As a sidenote, John Malkovich shone, as usual, for his performance. The roommate Joel Moore was good too.

[–] jimjamjames 18 years ago

Yeah i agree :) i thought Audrey's character at the end was a joke.. awfully scripted. she didn't even kiss the glass properly when she visited Jerome in prison. Crumb is by far Zwigoff's best work i felt a little uneasy with ghost world. still his output is generally good.

[–] Kerrigan181 18 years ago

why such poor reviews? because it sucked.

[–] Warhol_Superstar_no_5 18 years ago

Why such poor reviews? Because people (like Kerrigan181) are stupid.

[–] jimjamjames 18 years ago

*raises handbag*

[–] 18 years ago

[deleted]

[–] ilikemuggles 18 years ago

I haven't seen the other movies you've mentioned, so I can't comment specifically on that. But I think that ASC's content and satire is unknown to a lot of people, perhaps people are actually of the postmodernist mindset and disagree with the satire, or people were expecting to get a movie like "Ghost World" again (which I actually didn't like, outside of the art class the main character took).

I thought that ASC was fairly brillant on some of its criticism of the art world. I could have actually done without the love story in the movie, though. But perhaps without it (and Jerome's arrest), it would have been too depressing.

[–] dale_cooper 18 years ago

I do always enjoy the conspiracy theories that point to anything except the obvious flaws in the movie. But sorry, it just isn't good. I watched this last night with a group of friends, most of whom had high expectations for it, and we unanimously disliked it. Why? Let's see:

1. The humor is not funny. This may be somewhat subjective but none of us were laughing at most of the jokes. A lot of it seemed really strained - throwing in a lot of over-the-top profanity to try to get an unearned laugh. Like the cop referring to women as "gash," and basically everything the film student said. It was sub-Kevin Smith stuff.

2. Speaking of sub-Kevin Smith, a lot of the cast was really poor. Ghost World was so well cast... this really surprised me.

3. The main character. Were we supposed to like him? At all? I struggled to sympathize with him for the first half of the movie, and resigned myself to hating him for the second half. But even after the movie ended I wasn't certain what the director WANTED me to feel about him. (For a more sure-handed approach to an unsympathetic protagonist, go watch Election.)

4. The strangler plot at first felt cliched and superfluous, then awkward as it took over the movie, and finally irritating as each twist was telegraphed and trite. At the point where the protagonist took the drunk's paintings and tried to pawn them off as his own, I shut my brain down. His descent into alcohol-swigging, humanity-hating moron happened in about one scene, it seemed like. Not good plotting, unless we're really supposed to despise the guy and realize that his IQ is well under normal.

Ultimately I was very disappointed in this movie. Ghost World was much, much better.

[–] explainmyself 18 years ago

I thought ASC was a damn near pitch-perfect satire for the first 47 minutes or so, but as it progressed and tried to wrap things up, it felt haphazard and sloppy. It unfurled so fast into something so much less than it should've been. It doesn't deserve that low of a rating, but this movie wasn't great overall either. That being said, I agree that United 93 sucked lemur scrotal sacks, but TYFS was okay. I'd rate it better than this.

[–] mgriffin-9 18 years ago

this movie was god awful. it was a confused, jumbled, pretentious mess. this movie didn't know what kind of movie it wanted to be. coming of age? romantic comedy? mystery thriller?
all of the characters are flat. (with the slight exception of malkovich). the flattest of all is the spineless mope that is jerome. this emo bastard is the kind of stereotypical depiction of 'art kids' that makes me want to punch a kitten in the face. he spends the whole movie feeling sorry for himself, waiting for a people to stop talking so they'll listen to him. in all actuality, someone as cool and smart as the blonde chick (audrey i think her name was) wouldn't give this whiney sap the time of day.

god this movie sucked.

[–] rdsla 18 years ago

Mgriffin, I think you said it well.
You start out wanting to root for the main character Jerome but end up disliking the "spineless mope" as you well describe him.
There could be a good movie in here somewhere.....but it didn't happen....

[–] PunchB 17 years ago

except the girl wasn't cool and smart at all, she was superficial and vapid and fell for the guy who just faked it all. You're right that she wouldn't be attracted to a guy like Jerome though. Not until he pretends to be a badass killer.

[–] frozensky 17 years ago

Because it's not that great.

[–] drudolph8 17 years ago

Brilliant response.

[–] artistoartist 17 years ago

Because it is an uncompromising downer despite the humor. Americans have trouble swallowing that kind of bitter finality down. Still, it was a sharp critique of the ponzi-like art school power system.

[–] man-dovvn 17 years ago

Sharp critique or not, the film style and storyline stank like a corpse that's been out in the sun. The stories were disjointed, unbelievable and were mostly left unfinished.