Igby Goes Down

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Distributing Corporation (MGM) | Release Date: September 13, 2002

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

72	METASCORE Generally favorable reviews based on 30 Critic Reviews

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Critic Reviews

Critic score Publication By date

100

Lisa Schwarzbaum

Gets weirder and meaner and darker and sadder as it progresses, which is amazing since it simultaneously remains funny and horrifying right up to the end. Read full review

100

David Edelstein

Igby Goes Down got a reaction from me: I think it's the movie of the year. I squirmed, I laughed a lot. Read full review

John Patterson

Culkin, a revelation here, mines every last nuance of the confusion and anger that results. Bursting with grenadelike one-liners and full-bodied performances, particularly from Sarandon (batty) and Goldblum (creepy) -- Igby Goes Down inaugurates a career that should be well worth following closely. Read full review

Michael O'Sullivan

Wickedly funny, jarringly transgressive, obdurately unpigeonholeable and startlingly moving. Read full review

Stephen Hunter

A dead-on sense of how rich kids live and talk today, a sense of the melancholy of a dysfunctional family, and some great dark laughs. Read full review

Kimberley Jones

Smart, uncanny, resistant to the short cuts of pop psychology, and shocking in the best since of the word, Steers' debut is a stunner. Read full review

Steven Rea

Smart and novelistic and spiked with more than a bit of The Catcher in the Rye, Steers' movie is a prickly coming-of-age tale in which everybody -- but especially Culkin -- shines. Read full review

Chris Kaltenbach

This is a marvelous film, a look at the strange, exasperatingly labyrinthine process of adolescence and the diverse ways people find to deal with it.

Jami Bernard

The movie is an actors' paradise, and absolutely no one disappoints. Read full review

Roger Ebert

An inspired example of the story in which the adolescent hero discovers that the world sucks, people are phonies, and sex is a consolation. Because the genre is well established, what makes the movie fresh is smart writing, skewed characters, and the title performance by Kieran Culkin. Read full review

Rick Groen

This film and Salinger's novel differ greatly in the details of narrative and character. Yet, there's no mistaking the similarity in tone and sensibility and, particularly, in the capacity to split an audience into warring camps fighting on shared ground. Read full review

Ty Burr

Across the board, the performances testify, often hilariously, to the pain these characters feel and inflict but are incapable of expressing. Read full review

Shawn Levy

You'll gasp appalled and laugh outraged and possibly, watching the spectacle of a promising young lad treading desperately in a nasty sea, shed an errant tear.

Stephen Holden

Although Igby has its share of glitches and tonal inconsistencies, it packs an emotional wallop similar to that of another cultural golden oldie as beloved in its way as "The Catcher in the Rye": "The Graduate." Read full review

Scott Tobias

Gives the impression of spontaneity while being meticulously planned. Most importantly, Steers and Culkin know that the best way to evoke sympathy is never to beg for it; by the end, their achievement seems hard-won. Read full review

Young Kieran Culkin holds his own against a stellar ensemble in Igby Goes Down, a family comedy so dark it turns "The Royal Tennebaums" into latter-day Bradys. Read full review

Rene Rodriguez

More sour than sweet, but Steers knows that, even in a cruel, unsentimental world, there is room for forgiveness and hope. Just don't expect a hug. Read full review

James Berardinelli

Lightweight, although it exhibits enough heft for us to develop an emotional connection with the main character. I have always appreciated a smartly written motion picture, and, whatever flaws Igby Goes Down may possess, it is undeniably that. Read full review

Jonathan Foreman

Culkin is superb - he makes you forget that Igby is a spoiled brat who actually deserves the beating he gets. Read full review

Robert K. Elder

Think of the Slocumbs as distant relatives of "The Royal Tenenbaums," only more dysfunctional and far from attractively "quirky." Read full review

Fred Camper

Misses a chance to use the Manhattan setting to add to his protagonist's displacement, instead treating the city as a bland backdrop. Read full review

New Times (L.A.)Robert Wilonsky

Steers' film will likely polarize the audience, which, if nothing else, gives it rare resonance; at least it makes you feel, where many similar indie efforts make you sleepy.

Stephanie Zacharek

Witty and intelligently made. It's also utterly baffling. Read full review

TV Guide MagazineKen Fox

The film lacks the turbulent social context of the 1950s and '60s that lent resonance to the personal uncertainties of Ibgy's forebears -- Holden Caufield, Ben Braddock, et al. But Culkin has a way with quip-heavy dialogue that transforms what might otherwise been irritatingly, solipsistic posing into a great performance. Read full review

David Sterritt

Hammers home its tragicomic points too heavily for either its humorous or dramatic aspects to gather much emotional steam. Read full review

Joe Morgenstern

Igby has his own prickly charisma and bleak humor; he's a character you'd like very much to embrace. But he's surrounded by insufferable fools in the airless Manhattan universe of a film that's as offputtingly precocious as its preppy hero.

Ed Park

Culkin broods and freaks out ably, but Igby's snotty, dysfunction-derived malaise remains off-putting, mostly because his lines aren't half as clever or empathic as Steers would believe. Read full review

Kenneth Turan

Writer-director Steers has chosen to overload "Igby" with phony archness and forced black humor, making it not the place to look for satisfying acting. Read full review

William Arnold

Its motif is self-pity, Steers displays no particular way with a scene, and, as Igby, Culkin exudes none of the charm or charisma that might keep a more general audience even vaguely interested in his bratty character. Read full review

Mick LaSalle

Mean-spirited and not remotely clever, though it strives for archness at every turn. Read full review