April 25: The Rules of Attraction

"The incredibly spoiled and overprivileged students of Camden College are a backdrop for an unusual love triangle between a drug dealer, a virgin and a bisexual classmate."

   The Rules of Attraction is one of the those movies that should be much better than it is. It's directed and written by Roger Avary, who also wrote Pulp Fiction and is based on a book by Bret Easton Ellis, who wrote American Psycho. The film is certainly a combination of the two, with multiple stories coming together in the end, a massive amount of drug use and sex, and violent inner monologues that lead us to believe everyone is insane. Yet even with the orgy of cocaine and explicit college hormones, The Rules of Attraction is really not that good. It's a film that follows a handful of beautiful people, all incredibly unlikable, and their beautiful problems. Oh, and they're all rich and spoiled. You end up hating every single one of them and you could give a shit what happens to them in the end. 

They buy and use enough cocaine to support a small Colombian family. 

   The Rules of Attraction is clearly an outlet for teen actors hoping to avoid being type-cast as good little kids. James Van Der Beek plays the main character Sean Bateman (Yes, Patrick's brother) and is kind of a complete douche bag. He sells drugs, f**ks plenty of women, masturbates a lot, and is even in a gay fantasy of another character. He's definitely not Dawson anymore. Jessica Biel plays Lara, a whore who's far from her 7th Heaven character. She gets drunk, wanders into the boy's dorm, and gets gang-banged by the entire football team. She also snorts enough cocaine to make her nose bleed. This is pretty much the entire movie. Throw in a few more characters, more drugs and more sex, as well as multiple story-lines aching to be "romantic", and you get The Rules of Attraction.

Okay, The Beek is kind of badass. 

   Now even though the story's sloppy and the characters are not the most appealing, The Rules of Attraction does have its moments. There's a party that introduces all the characters and after each one enters, the scene reverses and kicks over to another character. The way this is all done is great and certainly an interesting opening, but it all goes downhill from there. The entire movie becomes full of itself and turns into that guy you went to college with that drove a nice car, had all the parties, laid all the girls, and was an absolute douche bag about it. It all just ends up getting under your skin and you really start to hate it. I would not recommend The Rules of Attraction. 

The Good:

although a horrible character, James Van Der Beek is pretty cool and the film has a terrific opening

The Bad:

characters you want to see die with first world, rich people problems

The Ugly:

realizing it is set in the same universe as American Psycho and is nowhere near as good

Overall: 4.0/10

Trailer: