When it first came to cable in the 1990s–and after hearing much hype about the movie–I watched American Psycho with fairly decent expectations. Indeed, Christian Bale–in a pre-Batman role that got him onto the road to stardom–was excellent, but the movie didn’t really work for me. It wasn’t bad, it just didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.
Fast forward to about a month ago, and it was on again. So I gave it another shot, thinking that maybe this time I’d like it better.
Nope. When it first came to cable in the 1990s–and after hearing much hype about the movie–I watched American Psycho with fairly decent expectations. Indeed, Christian Bale–in a pre-Batman role that got him onto the road to stardom–was excellent, but the movie didn’t really work for me. It wasn’t bad, it just didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.
Fast forward to about a month ago, and it was on again. So I gave it another shot, thinking that maybe this time I’d like it better.
Nope. I had pretty much the same reaction.
But then I decided to read the book, figuring it would probably be better than the movie. Well, now that I’ve finished with it I can say this:
In the novel, Patrick Bateman is such a grotesque maniac that he makes Hannibal Lecter seem like Mr. Rogers. And that’s no joke. The absolute horror and despicable violence he perpetrates is almost beyond belief. Of course, it’s so over the top that you’re not supposed to take it too seriously–and I kind of didn’t. [i]kind of[/i]; but when he’s disemboweling women while he sprays mace their eyes and cuts out their tongues–it’s hard to find the comedy there.
The thrust of the story is that 1980s Wall Street superficial super ego surface features of a coked-out, soulless generation is to be despised, and the author, Bret Easton Ellis, make it pretty clear how he feels about those people, and how utterly useless he deems them as human beings. And maybe he makes a fair point. American Psycho is written with absolute command of the language, and Ellis seems to really know what he wants to say. I’m just not so sure that you want to read how he makes them.
