One of my earliest editorials took to task the NY Times film critic A. O. Scott for a review of Art School Confidential that I found to be banal, pointless and infuriatingly uninformative—while at the same time basically retelling the plot. I promised then that I’d review the movie after I’d seen it. Saw it yesterday, so here goes. Feel free to tell me this is banal, pointless or anything else you think fits. I can dish it out, I take it.—Dimmer.

To review a movie based on a book, should the reviewer be expected to know the book as well as the movie, or should the focus simply be on the film work as presented? Art School Confidential (ASC) is based upon a six-pager written by Daniel Clowes for his comic Eightball. The story was frank, funny and simple: art school is more-or-less pointless, the only thing worse than the students is the professors; art criticism and the value of art is decided upon by people who perhaps are not as worthy or knowledgeable as they’d like to think.

Clowes is one of a group of current comic book writers and artists who have a rosy tinted view of 1950’s culture—easy enough now to ignore the issues of the time and focus on it’s more beautific facets, it is still a romanticized view of a past that never existed. For Clowes, this means that an art school student should be at art school to first hone skill at their craft before moving on to express their own ideas once they have the basics perfected. Most anyone who has seen an art school class of today knows that’s way not how it goes. Clowes hates this, and man is he going to show you how much.

Taking a six-page comic to a feature-length script called for extending the basic idea of the original, and exploring more fully each of the subjects involved, with some additional plot devices to fill out the canvas. Sometimes this works well, other times it misses the mark a little—some scenes seem unnecessary and fail to add substance to plot, character or the movie itself.

As you would expect, Jerome Platz, the hero of the story, is basically a stand-in for the young Clowes: a naturally talented artist with lofty ideas of what art should be, inspired by Picasso’s ability to create both truly accurate representational compositions and to create new approaches—in essence, modern art. These ideas are quickly demolished by reality. However, rather than quit, he sticks out his classes with a determination to be “the best artist of the 21st century,” again emulating his hero. Into this detailed wake-up call to reality in art education, Jerome is also introduced to the reality of dating by his friend Bardo. The young Jerome quickly despairs of dating crazed art school women, seeking a perfect love to belong beside his perfect art: a muse. Sure enough, a muse shows up in his life-drawing class in the form of the body model Audrey. This subplot is a typical boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl tale, to be sure. It jars slightly against the overall bleak outlook of the film, but its moment of beauty and hope does provide a great counter-point: everything is not wrong, things can get better…  

Billed as a comedy, the film offers plenty of bleak, dystopian humor, alongside material which almost reaches traditional teen movie fare. But this is a comedy with depth, with meaning, and a few new things to say, even when dealing with clichés. Sure, some elements do seem strained, a serial killer sub-plot in particular. However, these are offset by the much stronger elements: Jimmy, a washed out, alcoholic, one-time great artist; the pervasive hopelessness of the professors; the rampant idiocy and pretension of art in a modern context.

The cast performs well—Max Minghella is convincingly uncomfortable in his lead role (either very good acting, or a true case of nervousness), Sophia Myles makes a suitably achievable love interest who only truly reaches perfection through Jerome’s art. Jim Broadbent plays his washed up artist role perfectly, Steve Buscemi as coffee house/gallery owner works well (is there anything Steve can’t do?), John Malkovich acts out his beaten, defeated Professor Sandiford character with subtlety and grace--his persona resonates an acknowledgement of his own futility. That said, some other characters are not quite so well done: Matt Keeslar as the “Jock in Art School” role, and rival to Jerome for the attention of Audrey, is a little too closely cut to the standard mold to be as convincing as required, Anjelica Huston works her two scenes well, but this very brevity of her role breaks the focus of the audience as they think “Guess they only had Anjelica for a few days then." 

Terry Zwigoff’s fine standards of direction are maintained, never getting in the way of the story, and never descending into cheap tricks. Still shooting with some of the outlook of a documentarian, his contribution keeps ASC firmly rooted in reality, even when premises are stretched. ASC excels is in its accuracy and honesty. This can be read as bitterness or a general aura of malcontent, but were it not for this solid foundation, ASC could be just another teen movie (the out-takes included on the DVD are mainly punchlines and jokes that, while funny. would have tilted the film more towards a simple comedy, rather than this pseudo-dark-comedy treatment—and would have made for a much weaker film.)

There are negative aspects explored throughout: art school has become a pointless exercise in buzz-word-compliant art; art professors can no more teach art than create it; art critics are shallow, pointless dullards; art buyers make art critics look like gods; the very concept of teaching art has devolved into meaninglessness; good art is wasted on a public interested at best only in the current fashion—however bad that might be (think Banksy, but try not to throw up in your mouth a little as you do). But the film is not bleak or hopeless; if anything it strives to show how this set-up can be reset and perhaps, perhaps redeemed.

Critics are often guilty of a cliché of their own: build them up, knock them down, rinse and repeat. In turn, critics complain about their critics, stating haughtily that they never, ever do this. It’s impossible for ASC  not to be compared to its predecessor from the same writer/director team: Ghost World, which, while also based on a Clowes comic book, had considerably more source material to work from (64 pages, rather than 6). Critical reaction to Ghost World was overwhelmingly positive—critical reaction to ASC has been pretty uniformally negative through middling (although it was rated as two “thumbs up” from Siskel and Roeper); Zwigoff’s prior movie Bad Santa suffered a similar menagerie of weak criticism—despite being everything it ever claimed to be—a bad taste, lowbrow comedy.

In summary, A. O. Scott thinks a comedy must be featherweight, disposable, happy, and hence disliked this movie. For myself, I’ve sat through too many of those movies to deal with another. ASC is a uniquely funny yet bitter expose of two things: everything you thought negatively about art school is pretty much true, and the ultimate truth is exactly as the last panel in the original comic book stated: “People are fucking morons."

Should you see it? If you enjoyed Ghost World, Rushmore, and other comedies in the same vein, then yes. If you are bored of the usual format comedy movies, then yes. If you are an art school student, absolutely. If you “profess” at art school, eh, maybe not. It’s not, however, a movie I’d say you’ll come back to time after time, so rental or NetFlix is fine.

Art School Confidential gets four tugs on the jerry helmet from me.