I just watched this movie. It’s so bad! Why? What am I missing?
To really really love this film, you kinda have to be familiar with the era that this film came from. Specifically, the absolute love of money=success of the yuppie culture of the 80’s. Also, ultra violence was a big thing in movies from that time.
For more context, watch Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street” with Michael (greed is good) Douglass.
I watched it for the first time the other day. I didn’t hate it, but it wasn’t at all what I expected, and I’m kind of surprised it has the profile it does. I quite liked the ambiguity of a lot of it though.
Interested to see what responses you get here.
I don’t hate it. It’s just a massive let down.
I don’t really remember it, so I guess it isn’t very memorable. It seems not to have been especially praised by critics, nor by the author. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Psycho_(film)#Reception
Original author [Bret Easton] Ellis said, “American Psycho was a book I didn’t think needed to be turned into a movie”, as “the medium of film demands answers”, which would make the book “infinitely less interesting”. He also said that while the book attempted to add ambiguity to the events and to Bateman’s reliability as a narrator, the film appeared to make them completely literal before confusing the issue at the very end.
I think it’s just fun to see Christian Bale convincingly play a psychopath lol
You can also see him play one behind the scenes of “Terminator Salvation”.
I read the book because I was a big bookworm and I had only that one book (was in another country, being poor).
So bad.
Just a really bad book with ultra violence added IMO.
The film is over quicker so IMO better than the book, which was about 500 pages too long.
What do you find bad about it? Do you have specifics?
Many things taken together: The message is too “in your face”. The comedy is weak. The story not engaging enough, lots of false starts but no follow through.
The acting is good though, and there were some tits. Overall 2/5. Not bad enough to matter, just “meh”. Which is why it confuses me that it enthralled so many people.
It maybe the time and place. Watching it now we might be too far away from the 80s to have it still resonate. Back in the 80s there was a few people like Bateman. So the commentary on the era while it was still fresh in memory that really added to the humor.
This is an important point.
All texts (writing, film, other media) are constructed against their contemporary cultural context, and rely on that context to give them meaning.
Ever watch stand-up comedy from a decade ago? Even if you laughed yourself sick at it at the time… it ages extremely badly, since it’s so intimately tied into the whole vibe of the time.
The more generic the work, the longer its use-by date - but of course, the less likely it is to be memorable.
After a time, all things die. And that’s okay.
Why do you feel it was bad?
I like some scenes but not the movie as a whole.
I expected it to be scarier. I grew up with a sociopath serial killer couple in my hometown so this was just tame compared to that.
anyone knows the same looking headset as it was in the movie where he is walking in the office room
