Day Nineteen, Part Two: Igby Goes Down

Though one is about bombastic intellectuals and one about mentally disturbed WASPs, Smart People and Igby Goes Down are in the same general category of wistful quasi-indie tragicomedies. But while Smart People does almost nothing right, Igby Goes Down does almost nothing wrong. It immediately took its place between Rushmore and Garden State in the list of films of these genre that are among my personal favorites.

The film is obviously based on/inspired by Catcher in the Rye. But where Holden Caulfield is cynical about and numb to the world, Igby almost feels too much: falling in love with beautiful women, panicking about becoming like his severely depressed father. What this film most reminded me of, besides Wes Anderson movies, was Charlie Bartlett, a film in the same vein released a little over a year ago. That character took the self-medicating, outsider rich kid from this movie and made him a creepily cheerful, advice-dispensing whiz kid, leading the school in a whiny, entitled protest. Charlie Bartlett was a terrible movie because Charlie was too perfect and therefore unreachable; the movie wrapped everything up too perfectly. Movies like this (in my opinion) are best left with a question mark, as the hero starts out on a new journey: in Igby Goes Down, to California. Besides those complaints, Charlie Bartlett also commits the sin of making stupid kids think they discovered "If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out," because they don't know about Harold and Maude.

Igby is depressed, desperate, put-upon, and confused; though he's sharp and quick on his feet, he certainly doesn't have all the answers. And that's why, despite the quirky circumstances of life common to these movies, he can be an everyman to the lost, indie-seeking kids watching this kind of movie.

One last thing: Kieran Culkin is wonderful in this role, able to capture both Igby's sly bravado and his uncertainty and rage. He's charismatic and sympathetic, and I wondered whatever happened to the actor--I definitely remember him from when this movie came out and also in earlier '90s comedies. A look at IMDb reveals he's got several movies in production or coming out soon, but Igby Goes Down, in 2002, was actually his last completed film. I hope he's just as good seven or eight years later as in that movie.