What does it say about a movie when the most memorable thing about it is a song by Puddle of Mudd that played during its TV spots? With a cast that includes some of Hollywood’s brightest up-and-comers at the time, The Rules of Attraction amounts to a disappointing fizzle considering the talent involved. In this case the cast is less to blame than the exhausted plot of young rich people with fractured egos and social pressures. It’s hard to blaze new trails on that frontier, as every independent filmmaker with a small budget invariably takes the route, leaving little territory left unknown. The Rules of Attraction never strays from the plantation and rests comfortably on the laurels of drugs, sex, and youthful passion.
In a story about intersecting lives on a small college campus, three people take center stage. First and foremost is Sean (James Van Der Beek), a self-involved drug dealer, who has his heart set on Lauren (Shannyn Sossamon), the artsy girl who’s perpetually emotionally unavailable as she holds out hope of reconnecting with her boyfriend who moved to Europe. Sitting somewhere in between Lauren and Sean is Paul (Ian Somerhalder), a bisexual past romantic interest of Lauren who finds himself attracted to Sean and thusly pursues him. Stuck in the destructive path of this love triangle is Lauren’s cocaine-addicted roommate Lara (Jessica Biel), the naively sweet Kelly (Kate Bosworth), and anyone else who happens to know the main trio. Getting this peek into their lives feels less like an insight and more of a burden to the viewer, as if we’re being asked to suffer for these wholly unlikable, unsympathetic characters. Imbuing a personality with flaws and quirks isn’t enough to evoke a feeling in a viewer, there has to be something worth relating to. The genuinely nice characters aren’t developed enough whereas the loathsome ones, the ones who thrive on manipulation, seem to dominate the screen. This unfortunate imbalance encourages the viewer to tune out rather quickly into the film.
Unfortunately for director and screenwriter Roger Avary, the film’s failings don’t fall on the heads of the cast. Van Der Beek, Somerhalder, Biel, and Sossamon all play their characters ably and arguably better than the script deserves. They make their characters just as despicable as Avary wants them to be, but unfortunately for the film the script never equalizes it so that the audience feels anything other than disinterest towards the people on the screen. Almost as bare-faced evidence that it was Avary who fouled up the conversion of The Rules of Attraction from book to screen is the enjoyable adaptation of another book by the same author, Bret Easton Ellis. American Psycho, starring Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman (the brother of Sean from The Rules of Attraction – weird link, right?), was a polarizing film but its direction managed to make the serial killing protagonist infinitely more likable than anyone in The Rules of Attraction, which says a lot.
The HD transfer of The Rules of Attraction hardly seems necessary, but it’s a decent one and consequently you can see every pore of Biel’s face as the camera has sex with her. The audio isn’t all that noteworthy, but then again neither was the film as a whole.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
The disc has one format of extra, but there are six of them. It seems appropriate that for a film about intersecting lives that the commentary would be equally fractured, but in this case it gives the viewer a better way to view the film as the commentaries, in each of the six cases, is superior to listening to the audio of the film itself. And yet, all of these commentaries were offered on previous DVD releases which tells you one thing: this disc is a direct port from DVD to Blu-ray.
Once you know the disc is just copied from a Blu-ray release, it becomes pretty clear that the “enhanced” resolution is little more than upscaling and consequently it’s hard to come up with a good reason to upgrade to a Blu-ray copy when you can buy a DVD copy for about $2 in the bargain bin.
"The Rules of Attraction" is on sale April 5, 2011 and is rated R. Comedy, Drama. Directed by Roger Avary. Written by Bret Easton Ellis (novel), Roger Avary (screenplay). Starring Ian Somerhalder, James Van Der Beek, Jay Baruchel, Jessica Biel, Kate Bosworth, Shannyn Sossamon, Kip Pardue.
