TV Guide's Movie Guide

By: Maitland McDonagh

Grade: *** [3 out of 5 stars]

I love you, you're perfect, now change

Adapted from his own stage play with the original cast intact, this installment in Neil LaBute's ongoing examination of the war between men and women is a bitter variation on the tale of Pygmalion and Galatea that doesn't miss a single cheap shot. La Bute's Pygmalion is Mercy College art student Evelyn (Rachel Weisz), who meets dumpy, self-effacing English literature major Adam (Paul Rudd) in the campus museum, where she plans to commit an act of philosophical vandalism. Incensed that a marble nude has been defaced in the name of propriety -- bluestockings insisted on the addition of a fig-leaf merkin -- Evelyn plans to deface the defacement by painting a phallus over the offending cover-up. Adam screws up his courage to ask this firebrand for a date and, to his amazement, she accepts; what could someone so smart, stylish and beautiful possibly want with him? It quickly becomes clear that she wants a project, since she immediately sets about changing Adam. She gently nudges him to lose weight, get a haircut, stop biting his nails and invest in a new wardrobe. Adam's macho best friend, Philip (Frederick Weller), who's engaged to beautiful but insecure Jenny (Gretchen Mol), on whom Adam once nursed a secret crush, pegs Evelyn for a manipulative bitch. But Adam's hooked: She's the most exciting thing that's ever happened to him. Yes, she's polemical, pretentious and pushy, but she's also hot and seductively self-confident. No-one ever looked twice at Adam before she started polishing his rough edges. Now he's a bona fide cute guy, and Jenny's admitting shyly that she's kind of attracted to him, her engagement to the self-centered, overbearing Philip notwithstanding. What sounds like the stuff of hundreds of vapid romantic comedies is something entirely different in LaBute's hands, and there's a real sting in the story's tail. But until La Bute reveals all with a resounding "a-ha!", Evelyn, Adam, Philip and Jenny embody everything intellectually lazy and emotionally immature about college students, and their overtly issue-driven conflicts seem cliched and banal until the final twist throws everything into a new light and reveals the depths of Evelyn's modish Machiavellianism. Combined with the Mamet-lite dialogue, a medley of all-too-deliberate pauses, smug literary allusions and calculatedly careless repetitions of the word "thingie" that obscure the meaning hidden in supposedly meaningless prattle, the result is a chic, vitriolic polemic that's as irritating as it means to be provocative.

The Shape of Things

'Shape' fits in with director's works

By Wesley Morris, Globe Staff
Boston Globe

Published: 05/09/2003

*** [3 out of 4 stars]

If you're looking for a genre, I'm afraid you have to settle for the new Neil LaBute movie being a Neil LaBute movie, which means getting comfy for an hour and a half of perfectly provocative but pointedly reductive discourse on how men and women behave.

The evidence in LaBute's earlier written works ("In the Company of Men" and the play "Bash" among them) suggests that neither gender plays well with the other. "The Shape of Things" drags art into the debate. The film of his hit stage play is set at a fictional Southern California university, where a dumpy grad schooler called Adam (Paul Rudd) is picked up by Evelyn (Rachel Weisz), a frisky art student. Evelyn sets the dorky, insecure Adam on a course of self-improvement - to put it lightly.

He loses some weight; his face looks a little different; he starts wearing sweaters that aren't swallowing him whole. His cocky ex-roommate Phillip (Frederick Weller) finds Adam's transformation creepy. So does Phillip's perky yet prudish fiancee, Jenny (Gretchen Mol). Still, there are a few things about Phillip she'd like to overhaul. As the months pass, Evelyn and Paul have separate and joint encounters with Phillip and/or Jenny (sexual, philosophical, and the like) that alter, well, the shape of things.

Sounds vague, but it's actually quite specific: The relationships in this love rhombus erode under the brutal pressures of honesty and duplicity.

With the perfume of last summer's more optimisic "Possession" behind him, LaBute is free to revisit love's funkier dimensions. And this movie actually makes a nifty companion piece for that one's bifurcated love story.

LaBute uses his Adam and Eve template to reiterate notions of gender collision that he'd shown in "In the Company of Men" and "Your Friends & Neighbors." But "The Shape of Things" feels less like LaBute's usual unmitigated excoriations and plays more as a hard satire of weak men, cold-blooded women, and the transparency and elasticity of art.

The cast helps enliven what could otherwise come off as a treatise. All four actors played these roles during the play's off-Broadway run. And excusing Weller, who's stuck with the jerk-who'll-never-learn part, the performances are more vivid and less rigid than those in the two other films LaBute wrote and directed.

Weisz, who's British, is particularly good. Evelyn is a cliche clothed as an enigma. The character is pretentious, untalented, and probably less complicated than the actress makes her seem. But, shallow villainy and all, Weisz is beguiling, never more so than in the presentation of Evelyn's juvenile final art school project.

Things calmly build to a sensationalist finale that makes children of everyone. What's endearing about "The Shape of Things" is how ideologically adolescent it is. After sitting through the whole affair, you wouldn't be wrong to suspect you'd just seen a terrifically nasty John Hughes picture. What else are these people but high school archetypes redrawn with adult ferocity: the nerd; the artsy outcast; the prim, popular chick; and the conceited jock?

Incidentally, LaBute has called his college Mercy, presumably as a nod to the fact that he has none.

The Shape of Things

Starring:
* A Clueless Paul Rudd
* My Future Wife Rachel Weisz
* Sexual Frustration

Directed by KU's Alum of the Moment

The Happiness of Neil LaBute's Storytelling

*** 1/2 [3.5 out of 5 stars]

I have to admit that I didn't have the same experience everyone else will when they watch The Shape of Things. The scene was Liberty Hall in downtown Lawrence and writer/producer/director/KU alum Neil LaBute was in town with star/KU alum Paul Rudd to usher in the film's Midwestern premiere and to answer any questions on the piece. Now, I don't want to sound like Harry Knowles here or anything, but the presence of these two really added a buzz of excitement to the whole proceedings. I mean, Ain't It Cool? Afterwards, Neil and Paul (or Mr. LaBute and Mr. Rudd to the rest of you) got up and answered a few questions from the crowd. And since Focus Features bumped me off the interview list so I had to wait in line to ask a question with all of the other mortals. But before I could what the acclaimed playwright and filmmaker thought of Aaron Eckert in The Core, he offered a great deal of insight into the film that I'm sure I would have developed eventually. Of course. But what really stuck was how he always talked about how he wrote his characters. Yes, they are repugnant or despicable or pathetic or sad. And these characters get themselves into situations which are screaming to create bitterness. What's more, LaBute uses his story to express his own feelings about being an artist. Geez, I started thinking that this sounded like something I would say about Todd Solonoz. And I frickin' hate those bastards. So what is different in this case? And no, it's not because I've never seen a movie where Solonoz or Larry Clark were in the audience.

The Shape of Things is one thing to those who have seen In the Company of Men, Your Friends and Neighbors, and Bash: Latter-Day Plays and quite another to everyone else. Originally done as a staged play with the same cast in London and New York, the film is about Adam (Rudd), a rather pudgy and dorky looking guy who becomes involved with Evelyn (Rachel Weisz), an M.F.A. student at Mercy College (Ooh! Gotta watch out for that symbolism. Of course, we're also talking about about Adam and Eve-lyn here.). But instead of just dating, Evelyn begins to make suggestions about how Adam should live his life. She harps on his weight, his clothes, his hair, and even his glasses. Despite the fact she forces nothing on him, Adam begins to comply and actually begins to look and act better. While this seems fine and all it comes completely to the shock of Jenny (Gretchen Mol) and Phillip (Fred Weller), two of Adam's friends who do not see these changes as entirely positive. And once ideas like nose jobs get batted around, they may be proven right. To the uninitiated, The Shape of Things plays like a romantic comedy gone bad; a film about a hapless man willing to do anything for the woman of his dreams. To those who know LaBute, you know there's something sinister underneath the surface. The climax comes as a surprise to some, however the film tips at it from the very beginning when the two meet as Evelyn considers desecrating a piece of art. The ultimate message of the films suggests self-analysis by the filmmaker, where the artist indicts their audience for doubting manipulation. The manipulation of characters, the manipulation of relationships, and the manipulation of the audience.

The Shape of Things should be an utterly pretentious exercise in self-absorbed examination. But LaBute, in explaining his work, put it as well as anyone could. "The truth is, I don't like to judge my characters. I like for the audience to make up their own mind." It's interesting because as deplorable as these characters seem to be, there's still doubt in your mind. LaBute wrote the play The Shape of Things in response to a reporter for the press junket for In the Company of Man when they asked whether Chad could have been a woman. LaBute said, "Well sure, women are human. Sort of." Evelyn is indeed the female counterpart of that now-legendary character but I found that I didn't hate her as much as I hated Chad. Yes, she is guilty of emotionally controlling Adam with no consideration of his well-being, but I kept thinking that he wasn't necessarily worse off. It's this kind of moral ambiguity that LaBute has become really good at portraying. I just kept thinking of those deplorable a**holes in Solonoz's Happiness. Yes, Dylan Baker had to be the unrelenting child molester who uses the phrase "I made love to that boy" to his own son and Jane Adams had to be meek and pathetic because she was a female victim. This is condescending to the audience. And LaBute even recognizes that even he may toe the line. The climax of the film looks like an artist justifying their work, but the more analysis conducted shows that it's really just LaBute talking about our perception and the way we view things. This is tricky and manipulative, but at least it's honest and has respect for those viewing the film. The main complaint against this film is lodged at this particular moment because, despite it's essential importance to the film, LaBute never lifts it from the stage. This moment exists, it registers, but he merely cannot fix the fact that the fourth wall is not broken here. The performers do what they can, but the conclusion feels less than adequate. And the performers do great things throughout the film, particularly Weisz and Rudd. Rachel Weisz has to make the unsympathetic beautiful and sympathetic and ends up doing it smashingly. But Rudd is the real deal here. In addition to a rather interesting physical transformation, Rudd also transforms mannerisms and his voice to modify everything changing about the character. The last scene where he confronts Evelyn is a moment that causes true pain to those watching.

Okay, I know what you're thinking. "Of course he thought that, Paul Rudd was in the frickin' theatre. That Jimmy O is such a star-f***er." No, don't believe it. The Shape of Things exists as a piece that questions how we look at characters as artists and as the audience. The film questions relationships and the intentions of the parties. The film even questions the things we say at the height of intimacy. This is an incredible thing, even if it suffers a little in the translation from the stage. Or it could be because NEIL LABUTE AND PAUL RUDD WERE WATCHING IT THERE WITH ME. It could be, but I know the effects of The Shape of Things still lingers. My date and I couldn't stop talking about how weird it made us feel. This represents fairly powerful cinema. And while you won't get to see it in such a cool venue as I did, The Shape of Things will certainly leave an impression.

Postscript: Another thing that is interesting about The Shape of Things is that LaBute and Rudd intended the story to be set at KU and that the characters reminded them of people they knew when they went here. Indeed, the staged play refers to the college only as a "Midwestern campus". When it came to filming, LaBute fought to film it in Lawrence but the studio was concerned about the inclement weather often associated with Mt. Oread. Okay, maybe that was only interesting to me.

The Shape of Things (2003)

Rating: *** stars (out of 4 stars)

The word "edginess" wouldn't have much meaning in cinema if it weren't for the slyly and subversive antics of filmmaker Neil LaBute. Ever since the daring writer/director raced out of the starting gate and took the movies by storm with his volatile and misogynistic drama In the Company of Men (1997), there has been other off-kilter fare that routinely followed such as Your Friends and Neighbors and the highly underrated dark and quirky Nurse Betty. Since then LaBute has laid low somewhat (although his tepid period piece Possession (2002) didn't make much of an impact when it was released) but has faithfully bounced back to his sardonic roots with the black comedy relationship piece The Shape of Things.

The Shape of Things enthusiastically promises to get to the matter at hand, that is, to usher out the insensitive and incorrigible conduct of lost souls looking to enhance their lowly existence as sideline social misfits. LaBute is firmly astute and bluntly effective when using his angst-ridden protagonists as perturbed pawns moving in all sorts of directions while having really no place to go. Certainly this moviemaker knows how to push the caustic human buttons and his moviemaking manipulation is the distinctive calling card that is so affecting in his dandy yet duplicitous ditties. "Shape" is rather slight as compared to LaBute's earlier creative cruelty-based concoctions but it nevertheless is a twisted celebration in the bonding of misguided personalities feverishly searching for that elusive emotional completeness.

LaBute's Shape is based upon his own stage play of the same name. In the big screen adaptation, we meet nerdy and nervous museum security guard Adam (Paul Rudd). He's a slightly roly-poly and awkward undergraduate English major working at the Mercy College museum to make ends meet. Anyway, Adam stumbles upon opinionated feminist art student Evelyn (Rachel Weisz) while she's contemplating the thought of defacing the school gallery's graphic phallic-enhanced statue with a red spray paint can. Apparently Evelyn has some issues with the radical notion of censorship and she's looking to make her viewpoint emphatically toward the stuffy university brass by altering the "protruding male artwork".

Naturally, the insecure Adam is intrigued by the defiant Evelyn and soon falls under her rambunctious spell. The couple converse a bit then eventually decide to go out on a date and see where their unlikely union takes them. It appears that the feisty Evelyn has a psychological hold on Adam to the extent that he changes his whole physical makeup--he rejuvenates himself by reinventing a whole new persona where he loses weight and cuts out the annoying personal habits that kept him imprisoned in his previous flabby shell.

Although Evelyn is clearly the motivating factor for Adam to get his act together, one is left wondering whether or not the former pudgy peon should have made the physical and mental adjustments to his lonely livelihood because HE needed to for the sake of himself and not just to appease the attention of a flippant female? Better yet, does Evelyn's romantic association with the new and improved Adam scream legitimacy or is he simply one of the essential convenient "things" to feed into her prosperous albeit selfish agenda?

The noticeable transformation of Adam may be beneficial to him and welcoming to his rabble-rousing honeybun Evelyn but the change in attitude and rationale has left those close to the newly developed rogue in a cold state of shock. Adam has a durable friendship with a lovely gal named Jenny (Gretchen Mol). However, their bond is compromised thanks to Adam's disagreeable demeanor. Furthermore, these longtime pals actually share an unrealized intimacy that would suggest that they be the ultimate kissing mates. But Adam pledges his devotion to the controlling Evelyn while Jenny is slated to marry her insufferable Neanderthal man Phillip (Fred Weller) in a hilariously tacky underwater ceremony. Incidentally, the boorish Phillip is a former roommate of the once-shy Adam. Hence, we're thrust into this four-way romantic roadblock.

If the audience is shrewd enough to catch on to LaBute's stylized take on the Biblical Adam-Eve angle complete with the contemporary references of deceptive dynamics concerning male-female sexual tension (not to mention the trivial motif of plastered fig leafs and the celebrated male member) then they definitely deserve the cinematic booby prize. As usual, LaBute has a warped skilled sense pertaining to the manner in which he allows the shady areas of both genders to wallow in their disillusion and subliminal disdain for one another. There's always that common element of sensationalism that dictates how he'll go about adding more salt to the proverbial wound in terms of highlighting the uncertainty and dissatisfaction of how the sexes methodically embrace their contrasting perception of each another.

The focused cast work diligently to give some verve and complexity to the quirky collegiate couples drama. Rudd is on the mark as the hapless hero that turns from ugly duckling to debonair dove as he's redirected to his sudden attractiveness courtesy of the sparked interests of an intriguing young woman set in her militant mode. Weisz brings a dash of mystery and self-righteousness as the verbal Evelyn whose sassiness is convincing enough to make any guy jump start himself out of an everlasting malaise. Both Mol and Weller are complimentary as supporting players that bring their brand of frolic and frustration to the proceedings.

LaBute's script is sharp and insightful as it stays true to the confines of its four principle players and their selected dilemma in terms of how they deal with the growth (or stagnation) of their on-going partnerships. Despite the threat of LaBute's narrative being considered too sketchy based on the fact that a handful of actors are left to carry the burden of the happenings, surprisingly the results are vibrantly executed thanks to the balanced performances that make us forget how thinly conceived this project could have been since it was originally designed for the intimate setting of the stage.

As mentioned previously, The Shape of Things is not necessarily one of LaBute's heavy-hitting acerbic profiles that delightfully lead us down the depraved driveway per se but it does convey the cynical spirit of presenting us with how complicated and comical the rigors of unconventional love can be sometimes. With delicious dialogue, robust wry performances and an imaginative outlook on how we as flawed beings can relate to our sexual expectations, things certainly "Shape" up in LaBute's preposterous yet pithy universe.

Frank Ochieng
@ TheWorldJournal.com (2003)

Posted 5/8/2003 8:51 PM

Manipulation molds relationships in 'Shape'

By Claudia Puig, USA TODAY

** 1/2 [2.5 out of 4 stars]

The Shape of Things is a cinematic shape-shifter.

For most of the movie, audiences will think they are watching the development of a romance in which a pretty art student has Svengali-like power over a nice but dweeby guy. But things are not as they seem. We won't give away the twist here, but the film explores the way men and women manipulate each other, a topic that writer-director Neil LaBute seems particularly fascinated by. In some ways, this film is the female companion piece to the coldly cruel drama In the Company of Men, LaBute's controversial 1997 film.

Based on LaBute's original play, Shape re-teams the actors who played it on stage. Paul Rudd is Adam, a shy but funny college student who's a bit rumpled and frumpy but kind and likable. He meets the free-spirited Evelyn, played by The Mummy's Rachel Weisz, at an art museum where Adam is a guard and Evelyn intends to deface a statue with spray paint. Instead, she spray-paints her phone number on the inside of his worn and beloved jacket. They begin a relationship, during which she inspires him to lose weight, update his hairstyle and wardrobe and even have plastic surgery.

The only other characters in the film are Adam's friends, Jenny (Gretchen Mol) and Philip (Frederick Weller), who are both attracted and repelled by Evelyn's more bohemian ways.

Though the writing is often sharp, one is reminded repeatedly by the actors' theatrical delivery of some lines and by the confined settings that the movie's origins were on stage. To fully take advantage of the medium, the original play could have been broadened to include some of the characters' back stories and motivations to offer audiences a greater sense of investment in their fates.

However, the movie raises interesting questions about the power exerted in relationships and the amount of control a person can or should have over another.

The Shape of Things (2003)

Reviewed by Dustin Putman, May 10, 2003.

Following a pair of tonally lighter films (2000's "Nurse Betty," 2002's "Possession"), Neil LaBute, a writer-director more famous for exposing the bleaker, more disturbing sides of human nature (1997's "In the Company of Men," 1998's "Your Friends and Neighbors"), returns to his old stomping ground with the challenging and wordy "The Shape of Things." Originally conceived for the London stage in 2001, LaBute has transferred his four original actors (Paul Rudd, Rachel Weisz, Gretchen Mol, and Frederick Weller) for this mostly successful cinematic adaptation, and their close familiarity with their roles is apparent from minute one.

Adam (Paul Rudd) and Evelyn (Rachel Weisz) meet by chance one day at the museum where Adam works and Evelyn is about to deface a nude sculpture that has been needlessly censored with a fig leaf. Both are graduate students at Mercy College, where Evelyn is preparing her art thesis, but otherwise do not really seem suited for one another. Whereas Evelyn is outspoken and beautiful, Adam is a little pudgy around the edges and has no seeming fashion sense. Nevertheless, when Adam questions their relationship, Evelyn responds, "Don't worry about 'why' when 'what' is right in front of you." Pretty soon, as Adam begins to fall for Evelyn, he willingly takes her advice to change his physical appearance and strengthen his self-esteem. In the process, two more characters become unintentionally embroiled in their questionable relationship: Adam's engaged friends Jenny (Gretchen Mol) and Phillip (Frederick Weller).

What begins as an offbeat, rather lighthearted romance brutally segues in the second half into something far more dark and unsettling. "The Shape of Things" raises several thought-provoking topics within its quick 96 minutes, including the value of art, the importance society places on materialism and conventional beauty, and the effect one individual can have on another within a love relationship. As Adam is subtly egged on (but not forced) by Evelyn to lose weight, change his clothes and hair, and even get a nose job, Adam goes through a transformation that makes him feel better, but at the potential cost of his longtime best friend Jenny, who has loved him for years. She and fiance Phillip are visibly jarred by Adam's changes, and wonder why someone like Evelyn would be interested in him. All of this is, indeed, a setup for a key discovery in the third act that is almost shocking in its unblinking depiction of human cruelty.

With the camera steady on long, unbroken shots, the actors are let loose to further explore their characters without the hindrance of unnecessary edits, and each one of them delivers an exceptional performance. As total opposites Adam and Evelyn (all biblical allusions intentional), Paul Rudd (1999's "200 Cigarettes") and Rachel Weisz (2003's "Confidence") are so convincing it's scary. Rudd brings such an empathetic vulnerability to his role that what happens to him in the crucial last twenty minutes is almost difficult to watch. And Weisz is alternately alluring and mystifying, perfectly embodying the headstrong Evelyn, who may or may not be exactly whom she appears. As counterparts Jenny and Phillip, Gretchen Mol (1999's "The Thirteenth Floor") and Frederick Weller (2001's "The Business of Strangers") add unusually strong support to a technically sparse film with not a single other speaking part.

As audacious as Neil LaBute's attempt to open things up is, he is not always able to overcome the notion that this started off as a stage play. With a total of only about twelve elongated scenes, the dialogue exchanges occasionally go on a little too long and feature some stilted passages, while the blocking feels slightly too stagy at certain points. This is the movie's one debit, significant enough to be mentioned but not so much that it destroys everything else that is so very good.

"The Shape of Things" is grim in its look at what one person is capable of doing to another, but it is not heartless. The characters are sympathetic without having to compromise their flaws, and the literate, knowing dialogue is oftentimes exquisite. As for the centerpiece of the film, a climactic confrontation between Adam and Evelyn, Rudd and Weisz play it to brilliant effect, and LaBute handles it with meticulous skill. The final moments are particularly heartbreaking, offering no false pretenses or easy answers even as the viewer is led to believe there may still be a glimmer of hope for these characters yet. "The Shape of Things," warts and all, is a motion picture not easy to shake.

Cranky Critic ®

The Shape of Things

Review by: Chuck Schwartz

IN SHORT: Strictly for the Art House. [Rated R for language and some sexuality. 97 minutes]

In a review of one of writer/director Neil LaBute's earlier movies we mentioned that our girlfriend of the time would accompany us to any screening we had, excepting his. Her reason? The perception that, thanks to film's like In The Company Of Men, LaBute was a misogynist. Here, in The Shape of Things LaBute returns to his human bashing mode (as opposed to the magnificent chick flick Possession) only this time with a female doing the bashing on a poor defenseless male. What goes around comes around and The Shape of Things affirms LaBute's place as a god of the art house circuit. Whether you like his films or not, none of 'em drop the ball as far as character development or motives. Whether you or I like where the story he tells goes is, ultimately, up to you slash us. The Shape of Things is yet another well characterized piece, with a twist end that we should have seen coming early on but didn't -- props to LaBute for that -- but the negativity that overrides his work makes the film feel like the same old same old, despite the swap from male to female antagonist.

Evelyn (Rachel Weisz) meets Adam (Paul Rudd) when she is about to deface a work of art in a museum in which he is a part time security guard. Her plan is to paint a penis over the fig leaf adorning a classic full length nude. Adam makes himself scarce while Eve (like we were going to miss that obvious contraction?) does the deed off screen. Thus, a romance is born between two college students, she the Masters Candidate in Art and he the undergrad majoring in English. He is as insecure and intellectual as she is aggressive and looking for a shlub to fashion into her ideal man -- which she'll do as Adam drops twenty pounds and glasses and changes is wardrobe, all at Eve's direction. Thus it is when one is in love. Eve also has a fascination for communist icons which isn't noticed by Adam or explored all too deeply by LaBute. That there is enough of it for us to notice makes us wonder what ended up on the cutting room floor. Onwards...

Eve is the most exciting thing, so to speak, to rock Adam's world, ever. His closest friends Jenny (Gretchen Mol) and Phil (Frederick Weller) watch the improbable relationship develop as all the nerdy gear drops away and a young, handsome, more confident man is unveiled. The changes spark a long repressed feeling within Jenny and, well, sparks will be sparks. The encounter puts Adam into a completely strange place, forcing him to make a choice between his new found Eve or his bestest and oldest friends, whose relationship could be sundered if what was not supposed to happen continues. We're not going to go near what flips the lid in the Third Act, 'cuz that would be spoiling the goods for all you art house fiends. It's an unexpected one, for sure and you've already gotten your full ten spot worth of story ideas by the time the bombshell drops.

If we had never been exposed to Neil LaBute's work before, we may have been wow'ed. But we have and, as we said above, we've seen it before. Changing the antagonist from male to female doesn't change the basics of the experience. We written elsewhere about films whose overall perspective is an unpleasant one. Sure, they have a right to be and, yes, there are some that are magnificent examples of how affecting film can be. All of the latter, at least, offer some subplot or element to make an audience care about what (we) are seeing. Eve's cynicism and Paul's ultimate humiliation (or liberation, if you want to look at it from a different angle) didn't get a rise or reaction out of us or the crowd we sat with. It is the kind of film that, back in our film school days, would have led to long hours sipping heavily caffeinated coffee with Italian names, arguing over the "meaning" of it all. So, for those of you who hail the art house as the be all and end all of fine film, have a fine time.

On average, a first run movie ticket will run you Ten Bucks. Were Cranky able to set his own price to The Shape of Things, he would have paid . . .

$4.00 [out of $10.00]

Everyone else wait for pay per view in a couple of months

May 9, 2003

MOVIE REVIEW | 'THE SHAPE OF THINGS'

A College as Eden, and a Most Nasty (Human) Serpent

By A. O. SCOTT

Adam and Evelyn -- please note the symbolism of the names -- are graduate students who attend an Edenic Southern California college called Mercy. The institution's name is one of the many little jokes strewn like creative-writing-class rimshots through "The Shape of Things," Neil LaBute's adaptation of his own play. Mercy may be the quality in shortest supply in Mr. LaBute's chilly, claustrophobic universe. His characters show as little toward one another as he does toward them -- or us.

In this curdled parable of sexual cruelty -- a kind of gender-reversed variation of "In the Company of Men," Mr. LaBute's first film -- Evelyn, played by Rachel Weisz, is not only the Original Woman but the serpent and, in her own estimation, the creator. She is an artist, displaying the passionate snottiness that is often, in movies and plays, the defining trait of such people.

Her big thesis project, which she teasingly keeps secret through most of the film, provides a climactic shock, which is provocative without being especially thought-provoking. It is foreshadowed by some blazingly obvious literary references (to "Hedda Gabler" and "Pygmalion") tucked into the dialogue and the set design in attempts at subtlety that make them all the more ostentatious. At the end, Adam (Paul Rudd) shares the frame with the word MORAL, rendered in big red capital letters on the wall behind him.

But before we arrive at the moral, over the course of a very long hour and a half, we witness Evelyn and Adam traipsing and jawboning through some four-way romantic complications that also involve Philip (Frederick Weller), Adam's obnoxious best friend, and Philip's sweet, nervous fiancee, Jenny (Gretchen Mol), who once had a crush on Adam. Adam, however, was too shy and insecure to respond to her cues. At first, he is pudgy and timid, skittering around campus in a ratty brown corduroy jacket and responding to Evelyn's interest in him with something close to terror.

Once he and Evelyn have turned into a couple, though, he begins to change: dressing better, speaking less hesitantly, dropping the weight and generally morphing into the Paul Rudd who so perfectly embodied the thinking teenager's college-boy heartthrob in "Clueless."

Ms. Weisz, for her part, is as bewitching as ever, and also genuinely frightening, and Ms. Mol has a melting vulnerability that gives her thinly written character a ripe, melodramatic coloring. Unfortunately, these actors are subject to Mr. LaBute's usual dramatic method, which is to cobble together a preposterous moral outrage and then wave it in front of our faces, asking us to believe that it is a window, or even a mirror.

They are also forced to speak his labored distillation of the contemporary American vernacular, an idiom whose rhythms may work better on stage. On screen, especially when accompanied by clumsy, literal-minded camera work, the words flail in the uncomfortable limbo between the way people actually talk and the way ambitious, overpraised writers like to pretend they do.

And there are certainly people out there willing to accept the pretense, who persist in mistaking Mr. LaBute's easy contempt for brave sophistication and his intellectual posturing for insight. After trying, in "Nurse Betty" and "Possession" (both written by other people), to show a softer, more humane side (and succeeding, instead, in demonstrating his limitations as a filmmaker), Mr. LaBute has returned to his more familiar role as an anatomist of human awfulness.

But aside from the faces of the actors, there is very little in "The Shape of Things" that is recognizably human. Elvis Costello, whose songs provide occasional bumpers between the talky, shapeless scenes, has managed more corrosive insight in a single verse than Mr. LaBute has in entire plays, and more compassion as well.

"The Shape of Things," which opens today nationwide, pretends to raise questions about the responsibilities of artists and the corrupting effect of erotic power, but instead erects a straw man (or, more accurately, a straw woman) whose actions are so extreme that the only appropriate response is the sputtering obscenities to which the other, slightly less contemptible characters are reduced.

But the straw woman, as it happens, has already delivered an appropriate verdict on the movie, right at the beginning. "I don't like art that isn't true," Evelyn tells Adam as she prepares to deface a sculpture in the college museum. Neither do I. But Mr. LaBute goes one better, with his glib, moralizing hatred of art of any kind -- and also of the range of human desires, imperfections, fears and failures that motivate it.

"The Shape of Things" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Its many sexual scenes and references are both fearlessly frank and annoyingly coy.

Entertainment Today

The Shape of Things

reviewed by Brent Simon

After taking a cinematic field trip with his adaptation of the literary love story Possession, director and modern day moralist Neil LaBute returns to familiar stomping ground, delving back into interpersonally nasty territory with The Shape of Things, a barbed, college-set romance and reconvened, hermetically sealed adaptation of his own stage play of the same name.

Evelyn (Rachel Weisz) is a confrontation-courting grad student at Southern California's Mercy College who abhors "false art," forced prettiness. Set to deface a sculpture, she meets the slightly schlubby Adam (Paul Rudd) during his shift as a museum security guard and proceeds to make him over during the course of their several month courtship. Adam cuts his hair, loses weight, stops biting his nails, trades his glasses for contacts and even contemplates more drastic personal changes, like a nose job -- all to the increasing befuddlement of his two engaged best friends, Jenny (Gretchen Mol) and Philip (Frederick Weller). Initially receptive to "the new Adam," they slowly start to wonder if the amount of newfound influence Evelyn is exerting over him is undue or even dangerous. This is all complicated, however, by a latent attraction between Adam and Jenny.

There's a bevy of great and deeply debatable ideas resting at the base of The Shape of Things, and that the movie achieves the success it does is a credit in no small part to Rudd and Weisz, both of whom are excellent (Mol has her charms too, while Frederick I unfortunately found as off-putting as his character). I won't ruin the punch of the film's twist(s) by revealing much more about its third act direction, but suffice to say that it will be interesting to see if those who lined up to take shots at In the Company of Men as somehow being vitriolic and fueled by a hatred of women (as opposed to, say, a loathsome or morally bankrupt character) will apply the same critical filter to The Shape of Things. The most immediate, surface difference between the two, though, is that the former wore its fascination and dubiousness with morality on the outside, while Shape is much more of a parlor game, a flippant response to, in many ways, the reaction surrounding LaBute's film debut.

For both those versed and unfamiliar with the play, the film version of The Shape of Things will feel at times stagey and boxed in -- the flirting has a weird, golly-gee feel and some of the stilted line readings are keeping with the theatrical tradition of being as much about conviction place-holding as what's being said or the specific information being exchanged. Part of this is owning I think to the film's production schedule, but it's not necessarily inherent to the material and I wish LaBute had made a more concerted effort to open the text up a little and codify within the real world some of what he's aiming to say. Elvis Costello songs replace Smashing Pumpkins tunes, used as scene buffers in the stage version, as the music of choice here, but The Shape of Things still feels like a brilliantly unknowable friend, existing in a world not your own. (Focus, R)

Posted on Fri, May. 09, 2003

Philadelphia Daily News

'Shape' a real LaBute
Cynical director just can't leave his characters in peace

By GARY THOMPSON

Elvis Costello provides the music for "The Shape of Things," though Joe Jackson's "Is She Really Going Out With Him?" would be more appropriate.

The movie's about a foxy art major (Rachel Weisz) who unaccountably takes up with a shy, doughy nerd named Adam (Paul Rudd), to the amazement and consternation of Adam's best friends (Gretchen Mol, Frederick Weller).

His friends are nice-looking and smug and engaged, you see, and they liked having misfit Adam around to confirm the superiority of themselves and their choices.

But the new and improved Adam upsets everything.

Under the influence of his new girlfriend, he loses weight, gets an MTV haircut, ditches his nerd clothes and begins to exude the self-confidence that comes from having a great-looking woman on his arm, and on a certain other appendage.

Suddenly Jenny (Mol), who chose her fiance Philip (Weller) over Adam, starts to wonder whether she made the right choice. And her loutish, competitive fiance (Weller is amusing in this role) starts to have an alpha male status crisis.

To this point, it's all pretty funny, and sometimes even cute - Adam is greatly pleased with himself, and Rudd makes Adam's goofy joy the movie's operative emotion.

All of which will lead fans of writer/director Neil LaBute, adapting (rather plainly) his own stage play here, to wonder when the bunker-busting MOAB of misanthropy will explode.

LaBute ("In the Company of Men," "Your Friends and Neighbors") is a notorious cynic with a flair for the devastating plot twist, and much as we like Adam, we know he'd be much better off in the hands of a nerd-friendly humanitarian, like Cameron Crowe.

Here, we're pretty much waiting for the opening day of Adam season, and if you know the LaBute of old, you can probably anticipate how it's all going to play out.

Naturally, it isn't pretty. I don't know if it's still possible for LaBute to surprise us the way he did with "In the Company of Men," either with his cleverness or his nastiness, but he gives it his best shot here.

That said, "The Shape of Things" does not end at the worst possible moment - LaBute adds an epilogue.

Maybe he's going soft. It gives the characters a belated chance to claim the tiniest shred of dignity, and it allows the movie to make a grab for thematic significance, lest we think the point of it all was sheer meanness.

Where would we get that idea?

Article Published: Friday, May 09, 2003 - 12:00:00 AM MST

movie review

Intellect, amorality give film 'Shape'

By Vic Vogler, Denver Post Staff Writer

** 1/2 [2.5 stars out of 4]

The Shape of Things" offers one of the boldest critiques of art's role and responsibility ever to appear in film. Focus Features

Or maybe it just enjoys grinding Paul Rudd's puppy-dog charm under its boot heel.

How cozy it would feel to slot away that second impression, dismissing writer-director Neil LaBute as a stylish misanthrope giddy to reveal the cancers lurking deep in the sweetest buds. Unfortunately, it's the first impression that pesters us, compelling this question: Does art exist to make us better people, or does it exist only to tell the truth, no matter how harsh and apparently hopeless?

LaBute argues skillfully and unlikably for the latter, making "Shape" a gauntlet you either have to pick up or hurry past, trying to forget you had seen it.

Heady stuff for an adapted play that lists only four actors in its credits, and means it: Extras barely crease the screen and never take a line from the two college couples played by Rudd, Rachel Weisz, Gretchen Mol and Frederick Weller. The film's simple blocking and minimal scenes thwart anything extraneous to its thematic concerns.

Shadowy artist Evelyn (Weisz) fires the first metaphorical salvo by stepping over the velvet rope surrounding a nude male statue in the university's gallery. What will happen after she breaks the rules?

Pudgy, insecure guard Adam (Rudd) points out her transgression but, like most of the men on the pathetic end of LaBute's spectrum, nearly pulls a muscle trying to assert himself. She declares her disgust at the bad plaster job concealing the statue's privates and her intention to spray-paint the figure. That he's content to leave Evelyn to her plan after getting her phone number establishes where the power will lie in their relationship.

Playing an anarchist Henry Higgins to Adam's Eliza Doolittle, she transforms his appearance until he's the cute Rudd we know from "The Object of My Affection" and "The Cider House Rules." The changes disconcert friends Jenny and Philip (Mol and Weller), who in some ways mirror Evelyn and Adam's relationship by providing the extremes of passivity and aggressiveness that LaBute seems to think people are fated to inhabit.

Jenny flirted with Adam in their earlier college days but is now engaged to Philip, defined succinctly by Evelyn as "the obnoxious type" - Aaron Eckhart in LaBute's far better "In the Company of Men" and Jason Patric in his far worse "Your Friends & Neighbors."

Early on, when the four argue about what constitutes art, Evelyn and Philip nearly trade blows over whether the painting of genitals on the statue is a "statement" or "pornography." Later she and Adam tangle over a woman who paints pictures with a controversial pigment. "It's called performance art," Evelyn says. "It's called her period," he retorts.

The debate becomes the strongest character in the film, and Evelyn is its nihilistic avatar. Adam's literary references are lost on her, including a telling mention of "Othello," Shakespeare's tragedy of romantic betrayal. The only culture she seems to have absorbed is reruns of "Kung Fu," with her as the master to his "grasshopper."

In the face of her withering pragmatism, literature and morality are rapidly shrinking islands that can no longer sustain a culture, let alone four students. Evelyn's intrigue slowly erodes into menace, so that when she reveals her own art, it matches everything we have and haven't learned about her.

The staggering and incisive "Company" buried us deep in the skin of a monster, reminding us that we are never far from becoming him - and leaving us to choose a better way to live. No less monstrous are the impulses that guide the characters in "Shape"; the difference is that when the film buries us in their rationales, we find it hard to dig ourselves out again.

LaBute is one of our most interesting and literate filmmakers, describing how the broader culture of art, business and academia seeps into our narrower lives. Through Evelyn, he asserts that "only indifference is suspect."

Yet in erasing our assumptions, he abdicates the role of artist by keeping the slate blank, by letting us feel that dreaded indifference toward his characters.

Intellectually, "Shape" is a tour de force that can't be dismissed merely for the coldness it makes us feel. Artistically, it should have been called "Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here."

Screen It!

"THE SHAPE OF THINGS"

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QUICK TAKE:
Drama: A student's engaged friends worry about the various changes he undergoes when he starts dating an avant-garde artist.

PLOT:
Adam (PAUL RUDD) is a nerdy college student who meets and is instantly smitten with Evelyn (RACHEL WEISZ), an art student who's about to deface a statue in the art museum where he works. It's not long before the two start going out, much to the chagrin of Adam's former roommate, Phillip (FREDERICK WELLER), and his fiancee, Jenny (GRETCHEN MOL).

They're not happy with the way he's starting to change - in both appearance and demeanor - and blame her for what everyone else would probably deem a positive transformation. That eventually puts a strain on the friendship, although Adam and Jenny obviously have unresolved but never acted upon feelings for one another.

As the four try to deal with their reactions to that and each other, they're unaware of the unexpected ramifications that await them.

OUR TAKE: 5 out of 10

For right or wrong, many relationships are all about manipulation. When one is pursuing a boyfriend or girlfriend, they consciously or subconsciously alter the way they normally speak, act, look and even smell. They do so, naturally, to attract someone else and manipulate that person into liking them. It's much like when a fisherman snares an initially wary fish with an enticing lure that turns out not to be the real thing.

Once the prospective mate has been landed and some if not all of the early pretense is diminished or dropped altogether, the next level of manipulation occurs. That's when people try to change their significant other and the way they dress, act, speak, etc. Some changes are for the better, but others are done only for the manipulator's own happiness or need for control.

All of that plays out in "The Shape of Things," writer/director Neil LaBute's big screen adaptation of his own stage play. Since all of the filmmaker's previous efforts - including "Possession" and "Your Friends & Neighbors" - have involved examining relationships of one form or another, and some, such as "In the Company of Men," have included horrific if fascinating forms of manipulation, the work is by no means a surprise.

The plot is simple yet deceivingly complex. In it, a dowdy loser is transformed by his art student girlfriend into an appealing, regular guy, much to the shock and dismay of his best "friends." Why they're so observant of and obsessed with him and his appearance is never credibly addressed beyond them being superficial jerks and/or symbolic elements of the film's message and theme.

While that might not sound like much, LaBute has layered the work so that there's more than initially meets the eye, including a whopper of a twist. I didn't see it coming, although it's not really of the losing one's socks variety.

That said, it will surprise, shock and/or disgust more than a few viewers. I found it - both as it occurred and in hindsight - as one of those developments that probably looked better in theory and on paper than in realized execution.

Some of that's due to LaBute dragging out the revelation far too long. The cat is out of the bag once the scene begins, but for some reason the filmmaker seems to think he's toying with the viewer by prolonging it (either that or he wants us to watch the victim squirm and thus make us uncomfortable as well).

Despite moving the story out of its original proscenium trappings, it still feels like a filmed stage play, although it's not as bad as other such efforts I've seen. Much of that can be attributed to the dialogue and pacing of its delivery thereof.

While some of it's rather witty - involving some fun, back and forth banter - and there are various cultural references here and there (such as that involving "Play Misty For Me" in one instance), other parts of it don't feel or sound natural. Since the majority of the film is dialogue driven, that's somewhat of a big deal, but thankfully it isn't chronic.

It is, however, more confined to the secondary characters played by Frederick Weller ("The Business of Strangers," "Cash Crop") and Gretchen Mol ("Sweet and Lowdown," "Cradle Will Rock"). In essence, Weller is playing the sort of LaBute character formerly embodied by Aaron Eckhart. While similarly venomous, the actor doesn't temper that with enough engaging characteristics as did his predecessor. Playing the less critical of the two, Mol is present mainly as something of a complication for the main characters' relationship.

As those two, Paul Rudd ("Wet Hot American Summer," "The Object of My Affection") and Rachel Weisz ("Confidence," "About a Boy") deliver credible performances as the Doolittle-like makeover candidate and his Prof. Higgins sculptor. While Rudd makes a believable transformation both physically and behaviorally, Weisz gets the meatier and flashier role (particularly when one considers how everything turns out).

The sort of film that might necessitate a second viewing to appreciate it, its structure and the finale better, "The Shape of Things" is undeniably intriguing and even disturbing. Yet, for various reasons, it's clearly not LaBute's most engaging or compelling effort. Accordingly, it rates as a 5 out of 10.

Reviewed April 14, 2003 / Posted May 9, 2003

E! Online

Our Review:
Neil LaBute likes to provoke. His latest--adapted from his play of the same name--is another of his morality tales, a downer of a love story with messages about gender roles, the nature of art and societal concepts of beauty. Paul Rudd, in an exceptional performance, plays a nebbish college student who falls for arty Rachel Weisz. But his coupled pals (Frederick Weller and Gretchen Mol) have doubts about their friend's new romance, putting a strain on all concerned. As the tensions mount, the film becomes ever more engrossing--up until its crushing end. Despite the script's occasional pretentiousness, LaBute's characters are fully formed, and the solid story is rendered with humor and perversity. No wonder the entire soundtrack consists entirely of Elvis Costello's bitter music.

Grade: B+

Mr. Cranky Rates the Movies

Shape of Things

Mr. Cranky's rating: 3 out 5

By now, everybody knows my opinion about directors who feel compelled to turn plays into movies. There's a damn reason they're plays in the first place: They're static, the locations are simple, and they're comprised primarily of dialogue.

So the absolute worst thing you can do when bringing a play to the screen is bolt your camera to a tree or something and set up a simple two shot and have your actors do their talking JUST AS IF IT WERE ON STAGE. This is exactly what writer/director Neil LaBute does. The film just shifts from one static two shot to another in a slightly different location. However, in a burst of cinematic innovation, he does hook these shots together with some Elvis Costello tunes.

The story here is that nerdy Adam (Paul Rudd) meets gorgeous, eccentric artist Evelyn (Rachel Weisz) and they start dating. Gradually, Evelyn changes Paul from a geeky loser into a pretty hot prospect. This really kind of bothers his friend Jenny (Gretchen Mol), who's engaged to the obnoxious Phillip (Fred Weller). As Paul's transformation from loser to winner becomes more profound, things become increasingly complicated between him and Jenny.

(SPOILERS - Okay, don't read any further if you don't want the end completely ruined, since betting on the twist is the only reason to see this film in the first place.)

The first three-quarters of "The Shape of Things" are utter torture, then LaBute drops his bomb on the audience: Eveyln presents a human sculpture as her grad thesis. That sculpture is Paul. She explains how she transformed him, made him change things about himself, drop his friends, lie. Yet it's clear he's become more attractive.

Here are a few reasons I don't give a dog's fart about this: The initial reaction is to think Evelyn is a bitch for leading Adam on. First, the guy got laid by Rachel Weisz. Boo hoo. Second, once he's over his heartbreak, he'll realize he can get more hotties. Boo hoo again. I mean, raise your hand in the air if you'd like to have sex with Rachel Weisz and leave the affair substantially more attractive to other women.

And then there's the question of LaBute's intentions. Apparently this guy is way bent out of shape about the conflict between morality and art. I don't know if LaBute's goal in life was to be a pretentious prick (the charge leveled at Evelyn, incidentally, using the "c" word), but he's doing a pretty good job. I don't think he likes the charges of misogyny leveled against him. Too frickin' bad. Stick to plays. If you're going to make movies, every dumb-ass in the country is going to call you some name sooner or later. It's a mass medium, you imbecile. If you want to do art, take up painting.

the shape of things

Reviewed by MARSHALL FINE
THE JOURNAL NEWS

Grade: A

He is Adam, an unformed man. She is Eve -- Evelyn, actually -- and the serpent, rolled into one. Can temptation be far behind? Because this is a work by Neil LaBute, the shape of things in "The Shape of Things" is not what it appears to be. While this seems to be a more literate version of "Extreme Makeover," LaBute has much more on his mind than the way a new hairstyle and wardrobe can affect the way a person feels about himself.

A film translation of LaBute's Off-Broadway (and London) hit, "The Shape of Things," which was screened this week for the Journal News Film Club, offers its credo early on. When the nebbishy Adam (Paul Rudd), a security guard at a college art museum, spots Evelyn (Rachel Weisz) stepping over the velvet rope surrounding a large classical sculpture, he tells her, "You're crossing the line." It is the first of many lines that will be crossed.

Before he knows what's hit him, Adam has fallen for Evelyn's sweet talk ("You're cute," is all she has to say) and is dating her. Obviously inexperienced with women, he can't believe his luck. Here's an attractive, intelligent artist -- and she's interested in him.

Of course, there's a price for her attention; there's always a price in male-female interface, more so in LaBute's world. But Adam initially finds it a small one to pay. After all, she's only trying to improve him: changing his hair, getting him to lose weight, improving his taste in clothes.

The changes are noticeable to his two best friends, Phil (Frederick Weller) and Jenny (Gretchen Mol), who are engaged. Phil, Adam's former roommate, takes an instant dislike to Evelyn, but that may be a mask for jealousy. Jenny, who harbored an unspoken interest in the unassertive Adam before Phil swooped in, finds Adam even more attractive because of the changes; the caterpillar is suddenly a butterfly.

"The Shape of Things" has more on its mind than simple relationship dynamics. It's a study in self-delusion, as well as a sharp critique of the narcissism of bad art. The morality of art is also up for grabs: Can any evil act be justified simply by declaring it art, by claiming it as a comment upon an act, rather than an actual transgression?

LaBute's world is filled with people who mean well -- except when they are succumbing to the worst self-centered impulses. Adam may be the purest of this bunch but even he can't resist the urge to lie to and manipulate his friends.

While I never saw the play on which this is based, I've heard that it was an edgy, expressionistic assault with blaring music by Smashing Pumpkins between the short, pointed scenes. The film is warmer than that, though not much; the music, by Elvis Costello, tends to comment on the action and be more inviting than the Pumpkins' aural assault. LaBute uses unsymmetrical framing and finds intriguing ways to make cinema out of what is essentially 90 minutes of compelling, edgy talk.

He draws deceptively strong performances from this cast, which had both the London and New York runs to develop the roles. Weller and Mol both seem to be playing stereotypes -- campus god and goddess -- but each finds unexpected facets to these roles.

Weisz, with her laser-like glance and determined jaw, applies a flat, Midwestern accent to Evelyn, giving enough artifice to the character to keep the audience (and Adam) off-balance. What she says is often outrageous, confrontational or cruel -- yet Weisz suggests that what she's not saying may be even more deadly.

Rudd, the central character, is a good-looking, likable actor cast improbably as an ugly duckling. But he disappears into the role with subtle touches, capturing the erosion of Adam's moral compass even as he is transformed into a swan.

It's impossible to have a neutral response to LaBute's provocative writing and "The Shape of Things" exists to provoke. Like LaBute's other original work ("In the Company of Men," "Your Friends and Neighbors"), "The Shape of Things" challenges and confronts, even as it forces the viewer to examine his own behavior.

JoBlo's Movie Emporium

THE SHAPE OF THINGS

RATING: 8/10

Review Date: May 7, 2003

PLOT:
A goofy, ugly, nerdy college student meets a cute, sexy, groovy art student and develops the balls to actually ask her out on a date. After some time together, the girl starts to change the guy for the better-- at least, on the outside-- while they continue to fall deeper for one another. Then one day, the girl asks the guy to drop his friends and we're left to wonder if this relationship is something cool and special or cruel and unusual. Neil LaBute explains...

CRITIQUE:
Continuing where he left off in films like IN THE COMPANY OF MEN and YOUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBOURS, bad-boy raconteur Neil LaBute is back in full "human beings suck" mode with a film that delves deeper inside the psyche of those of us who engage in a certain something called a "relationship" and therein, throw ourselves into that oh-so subtle "game" of manipulation, emotional vulnerability and ultimately, devastation? I like this kind of movie because it dares to be different despite covering situations that we all have to deal with in our every day lives. This film basically starts off like any other with a cute "opposites attract" couple getting together and seemingly falling for one another. Great...so far. But what happens when the girl starts to change the guy for the "better" and what happens when the guy is "okay" with that and what happens when everything she seems to tell him to do...he does? Well, what happens is a real-life phenomenon which most of us have experienced in one way or another, one that is more commonly known as "being pussy-whipped" (a title I personally would have preferred to the more lame and pretentious one ultimately tagged to this flick) What happens to someone who is pussy-whipped? What happens to a human being when they "fall in love" with someone to the point of losing their own identity, or at the very least, giving away part of themselves as they seemingly feed off their partner's affection and companionship? What happens when the changes on the outside, start to change the person on the inside? These are only a few of the questions that this film delves into and let me tell you, it's a wonderful piece of filmmaking in dialogue, acting and consequence.

Sure, the film doesn't flow as naturally as it could have (the editing is a little obvious at times and some scenes remain on the same on the same shot for too long) and the soundtrack is a friggin' disaster (felt more intrusive than anything), but the movie is based on a play and for that to work, you really just need the lead elements to click and they all come through in flying colors here. First up, and most importantly in this case: let's give it up to the actors. Paul Rudd...you surprised me. Rudd was the one of the elements of this film that I had major reservations about before my viewing, but I have to say that he does a great job of portraying this guy throughout the entire movie, and I say that because he truly goes through-- not only a major physical transformation-- but emotional and psychological ones as well (the final sequence is a keeper). Rachel Weisz was also wisely cunning in her role, with just enough bitchiness to provide us with hate, but plenty of sex and sass to forgive her anyway (holy sh--, am I pussy-whipped too?) The two supporting actors (the movie rarely shows anyone outside of these four players-all of whom portrayed these same characters in the stage version of the film as well) were also solid, especially Fred Weller, who was not only hilarious, but a perfect tit to Weisz's tat. He also carried many of the film's funnier one-liners, like the one about marriages and how "...by that point, you might as well go through with it" or his comments about Rudd's new look "...what's with the Jon Bon Jovi hair". Every time this guy was on-screen, the piece lit up that much more. I predict bigger things for him. It was also nice to see Gretchen Mol back in a movie again, especially since she also brought along her cute looks, personable demeanor, and once more, a nice yin to her boyfriend's yang.

A story like will surely be respected by anyone who appreciates "talking heads", conversations about relationships and analysis, over-analysis and a multitude of discussions thereof. I do, but also have to admit to having "tuned out" every now and again in this film, simply because of the sheer amount of continuous dialogue at times (where it's basically just them talking and talking and talking and talking...), but thankfully for me, that was a rarity since much of what they were saying was 1) very well-written 2) insightful and 3) developing the characters and moving the story forward. The film also plays with the whole "artist's responsibility to society, morality" issue, but that piece of the puzzle will likely take me another viewing to fully gestate. It's also to note that your own "personal" connection to any one character or the situations themselves is sure to pull you further into this tale, and in my case, I've had some experience with a little bit of each of these characters, so that definitely helped up my stake. The ending was also delightful (I use that term very loosely) and took me for a friggin' loop, but only in a way that reconfirmed many of the film's earlier sentiments. Weisz was also stupendous in one of her final "speech" scenes, specifically in demonstrating both her character's commitment to her art & self and her obvious trepidation in doing just that. Tough gig, but you pulled it off, girl...and oh yeah, great ass!

This is a great adult movie that one could/should watch with their adult girl/boyfriend by their side. Chances are that you will both walk out of the theater and get into all kinds of nutty discussions about who did what wrong/right and who's blame-worthy, and at the end of the day, I think that's what these types of movies are all about. It's not just entertainment, baby (although it is that too!), it's a thought-provoker, a cattle-prodder, a slap-in-the-facer and a very loud, very crude "f--- you" in the face of the norm (as per one very powerful scene in the film which combines the "f" and the "u" with the "c"...nice!). Incidentally, LaBute is known to have a very cold, cynical point of view, so if you're going into this film expecting to see WHEN PAUL MET RACHEL, you can forget it. This is the dark side of human interaction: ugly and cruel, but powerful and resonant nonetheless. Highly recommendable and oh yeah...quite funny too.

(c) 2003 Berge Garabedian

by Harvey S. Karten, Compuserve

Rating: FRESH (A-)

THE SHAPE OF THINGS

Grade: B+

Ever since "The Great Train Robbery" hit the screens at the turn of the last century, academics have wondered why the movie-going public simply loves to see destruction. Police cars turn upside down, buildings blow up, heads literally roll -- events which, if seen close-up by normal people (as opposed to rubbernecking them at a distance), could make some throw up their McDonald's. The simple answer is that we carry a weight of hostility, of actual or imagined grievances, and seeing things destroyed on the screen are at least a legal way of getting revenge.

In TV and in the movies, we also like to see human relationships destroyed, battered, pulverized. The trouble with soap operas is that they are redundant, each bearing the feeling of deja-vu, and that the characters are portrayed too broadly, too predictably, too melodramatically.

Neil LaBute offers something different, a distinctive look at the destructive way people really are underneath the smooth talk at fancy restaurants, at the mall, in the office and in the home. One cannot be blamed for leaving his films with the impression that he thinks of humankind as pretty nice on the whole superficially, but bursting from a miasma of noxious gases beneath. Aren't there times that you think that we insult one another, whether playfully or with serious intent, not so much to hurt but simply because that's the way we are? Think of a sixty-year-old person as the terrible two's multiplied by a factor of thirty.

Where LaBute's debut offering six years ago, "In the Company of Men," deals with a pair of yuppie office workers who plot to get a deaf woman to fall in love with them while intending to dump her; and where his "Your Friends and Neighbors" explores two socially dysfunctional characters; his latest, "The Shape of Things," combines the two concepts, a large part of the 96-minute story providing a solid exploration for a payoff that will knock your socks off.

Based on a LaBute stage work with the same name and coming across on the screen as a filmed play albeit with scenes of a college campus as background, "The Shape of Things" is about four people, supposedly friends and lovers, who are to learn that more than simple companionship lurks beneath the joshing and sometimes pretentious chit-chat.

Evelyn (Rachel Weisz) and Adam (Paul Rudd) are graduate students who meet at a museum where Evelyn has stepped over the line to photograph a statue of a nude sculpture of God -- which bears a fig leaf attached at the appropriate part to be in tune with community sensibilities. They date, become lovers, and socialize with Adam's Joe-College friend, Phillip (Fred Weller), and her Doris-Day-like fiance, Jenny (Gretchen Mol). While LaBute deliberately holds back on the chemistry between Phillip and Jenny to prepare us for a change in their relationship, he focuses on Evelyn's compulsion to make changes in her boy friend. (LaBute holds the view that the typical, intimate couple do not see each other as without flaws, eager to make alterations in looks and personality that would make their partners perfect.) While Jenny seems Phillips as a guy with a few imperfections, she does little or nothing to change him. On the other hand, Evelyn (read Eve) takes aggressive action to tempt her nebbish-like man (read Adam) into become more worldly, better looking, and succeeds all too well.

As film critic David Thomson has said of LaBute, he plays out his characters' misanthropy "with a very cool directorial hand, observant writing, and fine playing...he absorbs talk and the helpless ways it betrays us....unwilling to scold malice, wickedness, or unkindness." LaBute is nothing if not detached, looking with amusement -- but not bemusement -- at the human condition, but not about to make moral judgments on his flawed characters. In this well-acted, theatrical piece, he affords us a look at a world in which talk is mere surface. Don't listen to the pleasant ways people befriend you. Think of your circle of friends not so much as wanting revenge for past or present wrongs but as people who are tragically flawed. That's just the way they are; the motiveless Iago multiplied infinitely, doing their damndest to manipulate us and to bring us down. What a cogent, witty, ultimately chilling way he succeeds with "The Shape of Things"!

Greenwich Village Gazette

*** [3 out of 5 stars]

The reason for this thing was the reaction to LaBute's first film. "In the Company of Men" was a classic. An evil film about evil people with brilliant dialogue and a diabolical plot, which both enthralled and aggravated. If men could do such a thing, could a woman? Of course! So a couple of years back, he wrote a play that got much kudos from the London critics, and so it was decided to make a movie version.

So here it is: Adam (Paul Rudd) is a schlumpy undergrad working part time as a museum guard. At the opening of the film, he meets Evelyn (Rachel Weisz), an artist grad student, preparing to deface a statue of God because it has a fig leaf over his johnson. He tries to stop her, but fails. But he does manage to get her phone number and they're now an item. She has taken over his life.

Adam's old roommate Philip (Frederick Weller) is getting married to Jenny (Gretchen Mol), who once had a thing for Adam. Phillip is a typical LaBute male. Angry, mean and articulate.Sparks fly immediately. This being LaBute, one would expect that.

The film is basically a series of set pieces. Talking heads going at one another with a few changes of scenery to keep it from getting too claustrophobic. Things move slowly to a climax as the good people in the quartet begin to unravel and the bad ones go at them.

This all leads to an unexpected climax... well not wholly unexpected, but unhoped for.

The acting is tremendous. Rudd is at his goofy best, and Weisz, who thrilled us in "Confidence" is as smarmy as possible. It's nice to see Mol back in action, and Weller has some great things ahead of him. This is a must if you are into literary cinema.

Eric Lurio

Cinerina

Review by: Karina Montgomery

Review Date: 5/12/03

Cinerina Rating: Matinee with Snacks

Cinerina Review:
Neil LaBute, as a write and filmmaker, has never been afraid to show the ugliness which humans are capable of inflicting upon one another. In his movies In The Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors, he forces you to watch, to understand, and even to accept man's inhumanity to man by dressing it up as something too familiar to deny. Nurse Betty (not written by LaBute) was a more lighthearted touch, but still in keeping with his general themes.

Here, in The Shape of Things, LaBute puts his stage play and stage cast on the big screen so we all have the privilege of seeing this small ensemble of four interpret this theme further. As first you can feel the stage play behind the screenplay. The actors know their lines so well, and the visual codes of filmmaking exposition are dropped in favor of just plain dialogue. Rachel Weisz is an enigmatic siren of an art MFA candidate who finds schlumpy Paul Rudd in his the course of their differing agendas about art (she to deface and thereby free, and he to protect). A romance blossoms, and Rudd's character changes in the ways only pure, eager-to-please love can instigate.

Fred Weller, a man so clear and honest and open about his self-centered obnoxiousness that you hate him right off the bat, enters as Rudd's best friend. His fiancee, Gretchen Mol, is so clearly sweet and generous that you love her right off the bat. As in all LaBute works, people are not always who they seem, even when they are. You mean, people are complex? I don't get it. This is a movie!

The ad campaign for this film teases you with the title of the film, alternating between a shot of Rudd and Weisz eyeing a nude statue at crotch level, or the butts of a man and woman, her hand comfortably on his cheek. The film is indeed concerned with the shape of things, but pull your puerile sensibilities together - LaBute, he likes the layers. Wait, layers? It's a MOVIE.

All the actors, having played the role on stage, are very comfortable with their parts, and some of the parts are very uncomfortable. Rudd's character begins as many of us do (and whether we shake those feelings off at 5 or 50 or never is secondary), shy, insecure, easily overwhelmed. Dating Weisz, the man he becomes is who he should have become on his own, but was too afraid, too unsure it was possible, too nice. Weller & Mol create ripples in the otherwise undisturbed pond of Rudd's relationship with fiery, excitingWeisz. It's interesting to look back and recall that no scene really has more people than four in it; even with extras teeming around them, the little emotional world that these people inhabit is tiny but full.

What I liked best about the film was the painfully drawn-out climax - to say more would give you an unfair advantage. At times during the movie you might feel a sense of unreality, or suspicion, but it passes - smoothed over as quickly as it was noticed. By the end it becomes all too clear. I don't want to spoil it for you.

As unflinching in its honesty as it is sharp in its observation, The Shape of Things is not the best date movie, but you should see it with someone you care about.

by Anita Schmaltz

Metro Times (Detroit)

5/14/2003 8:00:00 AM

"You stepped over the line." Adam (Paul Rudd), a young, dull and spongy museum attendant, approaches a girl who has stepped over the red-velvet barrier to get closer to a statue of God. Evelyn (Rachel Weisz) wants a better look at the plaster leaf some uptight force has placed over God's very mortal marble member. Her radical act triggers an interchange between the two -- heated when she threatens to use a can of paint to break through the lie that covers the artist's original intent, then softened when she recognizes Adam from a video store. He had helped her find The Picture of Dorian Gray, a story in which all of a man's wicked sins are captured in art. The meeting ends with a date planned and the "love" affair begins.

Although Evelyn tells Adam her MFA major is applied theory and criticism, it's really the art of manipulation. One of the first things she says to him is, "You're cute -- I don't like your hair."

As the relationship blossoms, so do the changes to pretty-art-girl-smitten Adam. Soon friends notice he's losing weight and that he's putty in her hands.

After directing higher-profile Hollywood flicks like Possession and Nurse Betty, films in which he had little or nothing to do with the writing, Neil LaBute's latest is more in line with his early efforts (Your Friends and Neighbors and In the Company of Men) that were infused with a David Mamet-ian cynicism, embracing the morally despicable, disheartening and intriguing elements of human nature. And even though this film is dialogue-driven, our attention is always wound deep inside its coiling philosophies.

It's hard to believe, but LaBute seems to be getting even more insidious, maybe because he's getting much more sophisticated with his attention to details (both obvious and not so obvious), twisting an old tale with a new take and his no-bones-about-it allusions to the creation myth. Eve -- the giver of life -- an artist and teacher, lures Adam, the hapless dope duped again, into a forbidden place over the line. Once Evelyn (wearing a T-shirt with a red apple on it) and Adam bond as they look behind God's leaf, there's no turning back.

As Adam, Rudd is so accomplished at uncoolness that it's painful to watch, especially at those intimate moments. Next to Weisz's dark-eyed, life-savvy Evelyn, his naive lack of sexual savoir faire seems more appropriate in the sandbox. Their contrast is disturbing and effective. And as Phillip, Adam's longtime buddy, Fred Weller wields an astonishing, very entertaining mix of a "too cool for earth," self-absorbed attitude and a genuine concern for Adam.

LaBute's characters create a tight, interplaying weave that forces you to watch and judge for yourself. There's a moment in the film when Evelyn is speaking directly to the camera: She's speaking to her fine-art audience and LaBute is speaking directly to us when she says, "Only to indifference do I say ..." and then she flips us off.

Whatever you think about everyday manipulations, The Shape of Things will make you think twice before you "accidentally" throw out those hideous "clown" shorts your boyfriend loves to wear. As you leave the theater, this film will leave you wondering: Is art for people or are people merely vehicles for art? What evils are normal? And just when are you crossing the line? But there won't be a doubt in your mind that betrayal is the quickest way to lose your innocence.

One Guy's Opinion

SHAPE OF THINGS, THE B-

Reviews by Dr. Frank Swietek

Review: Anyone who deplored Neil LaBute's move into more accessible, "nicer" films like "Nurse Betty" and "Possession" can be assured that his talent to go for the jugular remains unimpaired. "The Shape of Things" is a tale of sexual manipulation every bit as scathing and bitter as "In the Company of Men," but with a reverse spin: especially after the lush emotionalism of "Possession," it almost seems like the mirror image of that picture, a sort of anti-romance. Though it's very talky, the dialogue is generally sharp, and while its origins as a four-character stage piece remain evident despite an effort to open the narrative up with outside sequences and realistic locations, that doesn't prove fatal either. The picture also boasts a final twist that's not only likely to catch most viewers by surprise but can also be read as a response by LaBute to his own critics--as a justification of art that's unapologetic in revealing the dark possibilities of human nature, especially in the gender wars. As such it's an intriguing kind of artistic manifesto. The story opens with Adam (Paul Rudd), a rumpled, ineffectual museum attendant, coming upon Evelyn (Rachel Weisz), a free-spirited, sharp-tongued art student, about to deface a statue she denounces as aesthetically false (by reason of a modern fig leaf placed over its genitals). The conversation leads to their exchanging phone numbers--something that seems peculiar given Adam's nebbishy character--but Evelyn's an oddball of a different sort, and soon the pair are an item, much to the surprise (and annoyance) of Adam's erstwhile roommate Philip (Frederick Weller), a preening, opinionated guy with a submissive wife-to-be named Jenny (Gretchen Mol). The effect on Adam is soon discernible: under Evelyn's prodding he becomes more confident and sexually adventurous, as well as thinner (thanks to a diet), better dressed, and more handsome (courtesy of contacts, a new haircut and even some minor cosmetic surgery). He also distances himself from his previous pals, though as it turns out Jenny finds him much more attractive than she did before--something that will lead to significant changes in the connections among the foursome. It wouldn't be fair to reveal how everything is resolved; suffice it to say that LaBute plays fair in providing all the information necessary to foresee the denouement if one puts the pieces together correctly. The result is a cinematic puzzle that's more schematic than natural, and one with a distinctly sour aftertaste, but despite the artificiality it still works--not as powerfully as "In the Company of Men" did, but at least as well as "Your Friends and Neighbors." The standout performance is Rudd's. Helped by impressive makeup, his transformation from lumpish nonentity to something approaching a smooth operator is remarkably convincing. The others play off him nicely. Weisz has a suitably brusque, demanding manner, and Mol a sweeter, more pliant one; with his shark-like, almost Satanic features, meanwhile, Weller plays a slimy cad as persuasively as he did in Patrick Stettner's "The Business of Strangers," which itself was an attempt to emulate LaBute's style. The picture looks great: James L. Carter's widescreen cinematography is crisp and clear. But your reaction to "The Shape of Things" will probably depend less on the skillfulness of the actors and production team than on your affinity for LaBute's grim, decidedly unsentimental take on male-female relationships and his depiction of them as a selfish, brutal sort of gamesmanship. In this case, moreover, the very names of the lead couple--Adam and Eve(lyn), get it?--point to the fact that the piece is designed more like a thesis than a realistic drama. If you can appreciate what many will call his cynicism (even without buying into it) and accept the calculation in the film's construction, however, you should find it nastily invigorating. If not, you're likely to dismiss it, for all its polish, unpleasant and unduly pessimistic as well as contrived.

Bad boy LaBute returns in good 'Shape'
Director's cynical viewpoint, fierceness are evident again

05/15/2003

The Shape of Things

Family call: It's fine for mature teens.

By Phil Villarreal
ARIZONA DAILY STAR

After a dalliance with tenderhearted romance last year with "Possession," Neil LaBute the bad boy is back. Boy, is he ever.

"The Shape of Things," based on LaBute's off-Broadway play of the same title, with the original cast intact, is a searingly intelligent inverse morality play in the same vein as his early films, "In the Company of Men" and "Your Friends and Neighbors."

Which is to say "The Shape of Things" preaches righteousness by spotlighting the depths of deceit. This is a fiercely cynical, searingly intelligent char-grilling of the relationship scene. The film is meticulously crafted, ambitious and uproariously funny.

Through the lens of a mercilessly cruel story in which art student Evelyn manipulates Adam, a pudgy museum security guard, LaBute explores moral conundrums, the politics of sex and - take a breath - humanity's need to call upon evil as a necessary cleansing tool.

Metaphysics aside, "The Shape of Things" is a thrill to watch simply on the levels of acting and story, greased by an electric, percussion-driven score by Elvis Costello.

The story is an sexes-switched take on "Pygmalion." Rachel Weisz is delightfully conniving as Evelyn, the twisted, cerebral temptress who works her way inside the body and mind of Adam (Paul Rudd), who is a bundle of insecurity.

After a riotous initial meeting, in which Evelyn threatens to spray-paint a picture of a penis on a sculpture Adam is guarding, they begin dating, and Evelyn makes a few suggestions.

Adam happily complies with Evelyn's wishes that he get a better haircut and shed some pounds by jogging. He winces when she urges him to ditch his favorite jacket and become a vegetarian, but he's too weak to resist. Evelyn, becoming increasingly malevolent, keeps lobbying for further changes, in personality as well as appearance.

When Adam's friends, Phillip (Fred Weller), and Jenny (Gretchen Mol), begin to get in the way, Evelyn even insists that Adam cut them out of his life.

It's crucial that Evelyn doesn't slip into melodrama, and Weisz somehow keeps the character just this side of reasonable by buttressing Evelyn's vampish looks with intellectual attractiveness and oozing intrigue. Rudd plays a spineless lug, but is likable enough to keep us caring about Adam as he gradually gives up his soul.

Spirituality is never mentioned by the characters, but the biblical parallels are clear, if not subtle. The main character's name is Adam, for gosh sakes, and "Evelyn," with "Eve" at its root, is about as close as you can get to naming a woman representing evil without going the "He-Man and the Masters of the Universe" route and naming her "Evil-Lyn."

Plus, the whole story unfolds at a place called Mercy College.

The moral questions brought up by this film make up enough material for an after-film, coffee-shop discussion at least as long as the 93-minute running time.

Reel Movie Critic.com

Reviewed by Shelley Cameron

Designing Woman

*** 1/2 [3.5 out of 4]

The Shape of Things brings more scathing comments on the state of contemporary society from writer/director Neil LaBute (The Company of Men, Possession), this time painted on a larger canvas that delves into our image conscience culture and its sway over modern relationships. Based faithfully on his play of the same title, his unrelenting dark view is evident in spades. With Evelyn (Rachel Weisz) leading the pack, all four characters at times push the boundaries of better judgement.

Art student Evelyn meets fellow student Adam (Paul Rudd) at the campus museum where he works as a security guard. She is audacious, brazen, and about to alter a large male nude statue because she believes the fig leaf covering his privates is an assault to the truth of the art. Because she is insolent, but also beautiful, Adam finds her irresistible. Something is not quite kosher from the start as sexy, smart Evelyn falls for nerdy Adam. In fact, this may be an avenue for LaBute to comment on the disposition of the viewer because, as we all know, that sort of gal doesn't go for the exterior on a guy like Adam. She tells him he's cute, but would be even cuter if he did something about his hair. Adam falls, hook, line, and sinker, because things like this don't typically happen to him. This is the first dive underneath the surface of things.

They meet for an evening of theatre with his best friends Phillip and Jenny. In a thread that runs throughout the film, the play is Hedda Gabbler or Medea or other plays with strong women figures. Evelyn is ready to spar with these provincial folks on the "marriage track" and gets the opportunity over a news item concerning the vandalism of a certain sculpture at the museum. As their relationship progresses, Adam finds himself accepting Evelyn's little suggestions for improvement. He gives up his glasses for contacts. He loses some weight. He's wearing new duds. All this is to the alarm of Phil and Jenny, although not necessarily together nor for the same reasons. Along the way, Evelyn speaks cryptically about her semester project, and her own metamorphosis into a person she felt more comfortable being. Adam is not quite sure what she is saying all of the time and balks, a little, at her alterations. Just as the literary references cast aspersions on us if we're not quite sure what LaBute is getting at, Adam is not quite sure what Evelyn is about, but loves the new found attention and the sex.

In addition to the ethics of deliberately changing a person to suit, the film exposes the whole notion so prevalent in film that good looking women may act disdainfully, even downright abusively, and men will find that fascinatingly attractive. Later they are shocked, . . .shocked, at being treated badly. That particular paradox is the basic premise on which Evelyn builds her relationship to Adam. In the process much is altered, reshaped: Philip's and Adam's long standing friendship, Jenny and Phil's engagement, Adam and Jenny's veiled mutual attraction. Building to a conclusion that is perhaps as painful to watch as to experience, there is undeniably something excruciatingly true going on.

Visuals are marked by heavy use of bold red in the interior spaces, in sharp contrast to the bucolic campus of Mercy (irony everywhere) College. The cast is the original from the stage production and repeats its successful chemistry. Rachel Weisz captures the self-attributed noble Evelyn with even-toned perfection. Paul Rudd does a very believable shift from uncool to cool in a clueless sort of way, never wanting to admit that he might not be seeing things quite clearly. Gretchen Mol as sweet Jenny shows herself capable of extending her claws and Fred Weller as Phillip, annoys at first, but in the end imparts a straightforward what you see is what you get guy.

The score with songs by Elvis Costello provide the ideal accompaniment. What Adam never sees coming is that he is receiving a lesson. Just what that lesson is, LaBute asks rather than answers. Evelyn's philosophy distorts the axiom that truth is beauty and begs the question: Whose truth? Is it that people (perhaps specifically young people in a formative stage of life) might ingest films like this one and then by example, shape culture or is it a reflection of how culture is shaped by our shallow reactions to what seems to be valuable in others? It is doubtful if any of these fictional relationships will weather this storm and survive but the film is guaranteed to give the viewer some serious food for thought.