Movie Habit

The Shape of Things

review by Marty Mapes

*** [3 out of 4 stars]

The Shape of Things is a film with a twist, and in the past, readers have appreciated the warning. If you like your surprises intact, don't read this review or any other until you've seen (or decided not to see) the movie.

Director Neil LaBute broke into the movies with a portrait of emotional cruelty called In the Company of Men, in which two men conspire to romantically devastate a woman. Six years and four movies later, LaBute shows us the other side of the same coin, in The Shape of Things.

Genesis

Plastic surgery makes Adam a better man

The movie opens at the museum where Adam (Paul Rudd) works. Evelyn (Rachel Weisz) has just stepped across the red velvet rope and threatens to deface a statue. Her beef is that the statue has already been defaced by prudes who covered the statue's penis with a fig leaf -- she says they thought sex organs were just too human for something that represented the divine. Adam, of course, is supposed to talk her out of her vandalism, but someone as meek as him is doomed to fail.

Their museum encounter is the genesis of their relationship. They manage to make a workable, if imperfect, couple. On their first date they go see a play (Medea) with Adam's friends Philip and Jenny (Fred Weller and Gretchen Mol). Afterwards, Philip and Evelyn get into a heated argument about the motives of the unknown person who spray-painted a penis on the statue. During their fight, Adam is caught between his best friend and his new girlfriend, as he will be through much of the film.

Born Again

Most of the film is about Adam's transformation. Evelyn proves to be a good influence on him. He loses weight, gets a better haircut, gets some new clothes. He even becomes more confident, more outgoing.

But Philip and Jenny, engaged these past months, hit a rocky patch. Jenny doesn't quite trust him. Since Adam is an old, dear friend, she asks to meet him at a park to talk about Philip. But with her own uncertainty about her upcoming marriage, Adam's newfound handsomeness, and their mutual regret at never having dated, they end up cheating on their partners. Perhaps it's "only" a kiss, but they have sinned in their hearts.

More friction develops. It appears Phil and Evelyn may have "done" something too. On top of it all, Evelyn gets strangely more distant, more demanding, even suggesting that Adam get plastic surgery. She seems very unlike the arty, carefree type we met at the beginning.

Revelation

An important revelation comes at the movie's climax. Followers of LaBute will have seen it coming, like two trains speeding toward each other on the same track. We watch in anticipation of the emotional trainwreck LaBute has carefully planned, staged, and set in motion.

Roller Coaster

The Shape of Things is such an effective emotional roller coaster that its flaws seem diminished. Nevertheless, there are some key unconvincing moments.

Adam, for example, is a believable character later in the film, but when we first meet him he is a nerdy stereotype. He doesn't feel like a real person, and therefore it's hard to imagine Evelyn becoming involved with him.

In fact, the whole opening scene in the museum feels emotionally and viscerally unconvincing, in spite of its intellectual richness in meaning and metaphor.

On the other hand, some of the movie's strongest scenes are emotionally on-target. The long scene in the park between Adam and Jenny is a very well-observed, well-acted portrait of emotions and impulses overriding will and judgment. If he weren't a dramatist, LaBute would have made a good anthropologist, observing and recording human behavior.

In the Company of Women

Sometimes human behavior runs toward the cruel and evil, and LaBute records that too. That means The Shape of Things may not be for all audiences. LaBute has a dark streak in him a mile wide. His humor is so black it's not clear whether it's even humor.

But the ensemble gives great performances all around (except for the early Adam, unfortunately), and they are directed by a man with an eye for human behavior. So if you take a chance on this movie, you're likely not to be disappointed.

If you've seen In the Company of Men, you should also see The Shape of Things; it's an apt companion piece.

THE SHAPE OF THINGS

Review by: Peter Sobczynski

May 9, 2003

**** (out of 4 stars)

The opening scene of Neil LaBute's "The Shape of Things" is a textbook example of the Meet Cute, the time-honored cinematic tradition where Boy meets Girl under wacky circumstances (bumping into each other in a store and dropping parcels, for example). In an art museum, Adam (Paul Rudd), a mopey schlub working as a guard, meets Evelyn (Rachel Weisz), a firebrand art student, at the base of a statue of God whose manhood has been covered up by a plaster fig leaf. Evelyn has arrived to spray-paint a penis onto the fig leaf in order to "restore" it and Adam struggles to talk her out of it, only to slowly find that there is a strange mutual attraction between them. Then Evelyn deploys those magic words-"You're cute!" - and Adam is instantly hooked. So hooked that he may not even register that she immediately follows up that statement with "I don't like your hair."

Adam and Evelyn start dating and before long, Adam undergoes radical changes under the benign influence of Evelyn. He loses weight, stops biting his nails and starts becoming more self-confident. He even junks his thrift-store coat for snappier threads and begins looking into getting a nose job. The trick is that while Evelyn never flat-out tells him to do any of these things, she is clearly using a passive-aggressive form of suggestion that is so subtle that Adam himself may not even realize it. His best friends, the engaged couple Philip (Frederick Weller) and Jenny (Gretchen Mol) are conflicted about his transformation. Philip doesn't trust it or Evelyn but that seems to be based more on the fact that he is the classic Alpha male frat-boy type threatened by the presence of any strong woman. Jenny also has misgivings but also discovers that Adam (who she has always had vague feelings for) and his transformation may have a profound impact on her own life as well.

As you can guess, "The Shape of Things" is a modern take on the Creation myth (and let's face it, when you open a story with characters named Adam and Eve(lyn) standing before the (mostly) perfect image of God, there isn't a hell of a lot of metaphorical wiggle-room for interpretation) and the question of why Evelyn is encouraging Adam to do all of these things is the one hovering over the film until the devastating final scenes in which all is explained. In a way, the story plays as an inversion of LaBute's first film, "In the Company of Men", where, you will recall, a couple of bored guys decide to play a cruel trick on a sweet deaf girl by simultaneously dating her and then dumping her simply for kicks. Knowing how LaBute's mind works (he also made the brilliantly misanthropic "Your Friends and Neighbors"), we can easily expect a sad and cruel fate for Adam but LaBute, one of the more intelligent screenwriters working today (here adapting his own hit play), is smart enough to make things a little more complicated.

For example, while it is easy enough to characterize Evelyn as a monstrous shrew, it could be argued that she doesn't really do anything to Adam at all. It may seem that she is remaking him purely for superficial reasons but her motives, we eventually discover, are deeper than that (unlike the seemingly random cruelty of the men in "In the Company of Men", it is clear that there is a specific point to what Evelyn is doing.) Besides, it cannot be argued that she does have a positive effect on Adam's life; under her influence, he begins to take better care of himself and his self-esteem begins to grow considerably. The means may not justify the end but it is clear that in certain ways, Adam is now a better and stronger person for having met Evelyn.

Of course, "better" is in the eye of the beholder and the manhood that she seems to supply him with is as false as the one she is attempting to supply to the statue in the opening. One of the ironies of the film is that while a closer examination reveals Evelyn to be a less unsympathetic character, the opposite is true for Adam. As he transforms, he becomes more acceptable on the outside while becoming far less so on the inside. He becomes duplicitous and shifty and even finds himself coming on to Jenny, the fiancee of his best friend. And while his early incarnation-overweight and sloppily dressed-is hardly a physical ideal, there is a suggestion that Adam is just as superficial as Evelyn appears to be; after all, would he be so eager to undergo this transformation if Evelyn looked less like Rachel Weisz (who is gorgeous enough to cause most men to sacrifice a lung in order to be within arms reach) and more like that surly waitress working the late shift at Denny's?

The above analysis may make "The Shape of Things" sound like a subject for a sociology term paper and hardly conveys just how funny and observant the film really is. As a writer, LaBute not only has a keen idea for how people talk-especially Evelyn, whose every sentence sounds like a thesis sentence for an upcoming manifesto-but how they act as well; he knows that there is not a person among us who has not done something completely alien to their nature in the name of love (I once found myself engaged in "conversations" with a collection of stuffed animals, each with their own distinctive psychological quirks) and he captures that simultaneous sense of embarrassment and liberation perfectly.

As a director, he has made (aside from an additional scene at the end) a fairly literal stage-to-screen translation of his play without ever making it feel stagy. Instead of lessening the impact of the fairly intimate material by adding unnecessary scenes and setting them in pointless locales, LaBute opens things up simply by shooting what is essentially a chamber piece in Scope-an unusual choice that really pays off. Instead of utilizing the ear-splitting Smashing Pumpkins music that he deployed on-stage between scenes, he has smartly chosen songs by Elvis Costello, another master of creating art that is deceptively pretty on the surface but fairly dark and corrosive underneath. Most importantly, he has retained the entire cast of the original stage version for the film and it really helps here-Rudd and Weisz are playing characters full of complications and contradictions and it is clear that their extended work on their characters have made their character far deeper (especially Weisz, who also co-produced the film) than if a flavor-of-the-month actor had stepped in to add marquee value and little else.

Coming at the head of what appears to be an especially inane summer movie season, "The Shape of Things" is a funny, wounding provocation that may not exactly be an ideal first-date film but it will inspire long and thoughtful conversations among viewers. It is a smart movie that perfectly understands the strange give-and-take that permeates even the happiest of relationships and why people are so eager for acceptance from another that they will willingly submit to it. It also understands that when you meet a girl and one of the first things she says to you is " 'Medea?' Oh, I liked that!", you might want to take that as a warning.

Popkorn Junkie

For anybody who has seen In the "Company of Men", they will soon find out that Neil LaBute returns back to similar form with his new film "The Shape of Things". And for those who were entertained by the savage battle of the sexes on display in the earlier movie will be similarly enthralled with this new film. LaBute is so good at creating interesting characters (even though you may hate some of them) and his quick, biting writing can only make one think of David Mamet.

The story unfolds as we meet Adam who is a nerdy college student working part-time in a museum. He discovers a girl near an almost nude statue and who has stepped across the ropes which are meant to keep people away from the art. Adam tries to persuade the girl to leave when he finds out that her intentions is to spray paint the statue because she finds something about it to be not an honest piece of art. Well, it turns out this girl, Evelyn, is an art student, and sure enough she and Adam takes a liking to each other and begin dating.

We soon are introduced to Adam's roommate Phillip and his fiancee Jenny. Phillip is a real obnoxious jerk and Jenny is a sweet girl who wants Phillip to change but apparently will accept him as he is anyway. As the story unfolds, Evelyn decides to change things about Adam at about every turn. For his improvement, she has him change his hair style, lose weight, wear different clothes, and even get a nose job. Adam willfully goes along with all these suggestions because his is obviously slowly falling in love with this wild and creative Evelyn. Then conflicts appear between all four friends and lovers which threatens both their friendships and the romance between both couples. At this stage, I will stop talking about the plotline of the story in order to not give anything away. Suffice to say, the film takes a detour from heaven to hell.

There are lots of themes being tackled in this film. From the situations where lovers try to change each other to meet their expectations of what they want their partner to be, to the themes of manipulation, distrust and humiliation that often goes on in relationships. At first, I was disappointed in the story because it appeared to be an overly sweet story of opposites who are attracted to each other. Boy, was I ever wrong! The story gets more intriguing as it goes along and the final third act will knock you off your seat. LaBute pulls no punches here as cruelty and manipulation over-powers the excitement of romance between young lovers. The story quickly becomes a fascinating battle of the sexes at the expense of a sweet love story between college students.

As I mentioned earlier, LaBute displays his great writing in this film. The dialogue is crisp and can quickly turn from being funny to being dead serious and biting. I've read where all four actors in this film had performed on stage playing the same characters as this was a play first. At times, the way they say their dialogue appears to be from the stage rather than being totally real. And I found that the character Phillip was a bit too obnoxious. But these are minor quibbles with this film as I found it to be most engrossing, especially after the first third of the movie.

All the actors give very good performances all around. Paul Rudd and Rachel Weisz are given most of the screen time and they are nothing short of marvelous. Seems I've seen Weisz in many different movies lately and she continues to impress with each and every role. I don't recall seeing Rudd before but just based on this performance alone, I look for him to be on the screen often in the future.

Anybody who goes see this movie and expects to be entertained by your run of the mill romantic comedy will be easily shocked by the turn of events of the story. This is not your typical love story with a fairy tale ending. If you have seen some of LaBute's earlier films, you will probably know to expect something dangerous and much more original than the typical movie about college sweethearts. The final act of this film just blew me away.

-- Mike ( 3 1/2 out of 4 pops )

May 09, 2003 Copyright © by United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

The Shape of Thing

* Thought-provoking drama about an iconoclastic graduate art student (Rachel Weisz) who uses the manipulating palette knife of suggestion to transform the appearance and personality of her boyfriend (Paul Rudd), proving that seduction is an art. Director Neil LaBute subverts the Pygmalion story, employing cerebral dialogue, pitch-black wit and a disturbingly manipulative narrative to explore the subjectivity of perception and society's fascination with surface appearances. Harrowing depiction of deceitful activities, implied sexual situations and much rough language and vulgarities. A-III - adults. (R) 2003

Full Review
An iconoclastic graduate student uses art as her weapon in the disturbing morality tale "The Shape of Things" (Focus). Like much of his earlier work, director Neil LaBute dexterously uses stinging dialogue and pitch-black wit to explore the malleability of subjective perception, as well as offering a biting indictment of modern society's corrosive fascination with surface appearances.

Whereas his first feature, "In the Company of Men," placed the dark, chauvinistic machinations of the male ego under the moral microscope, LaBute proves in "The Shape of Things" that deception is an equal-opportunity sport.

Evelyn (Rachel Weisz) is a graduate art student -- a provocateur in the vanguard of the avant-garde -- at a west coast university where she is working on her thesis project. While attempting to deface a sculpture at a local museum -- an act of protest against bourgeois mediocrity -- she meets Adam (Paul Rudd), a frumpy, self-effacing literature major who works part-time as a security guard at the gallery. They quickly become an item.

Adam takes up jogging to shed some pounds, gels his hair, ditches his dorky glasses in favor of contacts and even jettisons his signature lumberjack coat for some hipper threads. His metamorphosis does not go unnoticed by his friends, Philip (Frederick Weller), an undergrad who locks horns with Evelyn over her impassioned defense of shock-art, and Philip's fiancee, Jenny (Gretchen Mol), who harbors a secret attraction for Adam.

Adam's Pygmalion makeover is capped off with a tattoo and a nose job -- each step initiated methodically by Evelyn's Svengali-like promptings. The transformation, however, is not limited to the physical, as Adam's altered personality, buttressed by an awakened self-confidence, begins to strain his friendship with Philip. The quartet's relationship takes an unexpected turn when Evelyn unveils her thesis project, demonstrating to a packed campus auditorium that seduction is an art.

Without revealing too much, those looking for a feel-good ending with all loose threads neatly tied up will be sorely disappointed. As in past works, LaBute eschews pat resolutions, choosing to paint on a canvas of ambiguity, subverting conventional notions of romance and relationships. The narrative's pervasive relativism is emphasized in the final scene, where Adam confronts master puppeteer Evelyn against a wall emblazoned with the quote, "Moralists have no place in an art gallery." And while the film abstains from passing judgment on any of the characters, the despicable manipulations which unfold are not celebrated and are shown to have devastating consequences.

The film also succeeds in pulling the rug out from under the art-at-any-cost argument, revealing the dangers of a misguided promotion of creative libertinism at the expense of ethics or morality. Audiences, though justifiably repelled by the character's actions, are left pondering challenging questions about free will and personal authenticity.

Based on LaBute's own play, "The Shape of Things" leans heavily on static scenes consisting mostly of cerebral, rapid-fire, David Mamet-like repartees -- peppered with abstruse literary references -- that still bear the distinct scent of theater. The characters do very little, while speaking a lot, making viewing akin to watching a filmed version of the existing stage production.

Due to a harrowing depiction of deceitful activities, implied sexual situations and much rough language and vulgarities, the USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-III -- adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R -- restricted.

Office for Film & Broadcasting Movie Classifications:

The following are the classifications used by the Office for Film & Broadcasting in rating each film.

A-I - General Patronage
A-II - Adults and Adolescents
A-III - Adults
A-IV - Adults, with reservations (An A-IV classification as a safeguard against wrong interpretations and conclusions.)
O - Morally Offensive

The Austin Chronicle

The Shape of Things

* 1/2 [1.5 out of 5 stars]

Playwright and filmmaker Neil LaBute describes his latest, The Shape of Things, as a sort of retort to critics who branded him a misogynist for his first feature, In the Company of Men. The Shape of Things is meant to be the flipside to that film, proof that women can be just as calculating, conniving, and rotten to the core as men. LaBute has indeed proved that he's an equal-opportunity critic, and that so much doesn't bother me; I suspect LaBute and I could agree to raise our glasses and toast Old Man Sartre and his maxim about hell and other people (specifically, hell is other people). That pretty much sums up The Shape of Things' driving ideology -- a provocative one to be sure -- so why was I checking my watch every few minutes? Because The Shape of Things is a stilted, awkward (im)morality play, one that, disappointingly, suggests LaBute's recent missteps at the multiplex might not be flukes but rather the beginnings of a trend. He followed his attention-grabbing debut with the vitriolic (but in a good way) Your Friends and Neighbors; from there, it's been one dud after the other: the unfunny, forgettable Nurse Betty, the wan Possession, and now this. LaBute adapted the film from his stage play, and you can tell: Excessively talky and unimaginatively directed, the film, which enlists the same four actors who hit the boards in London and New York, feels very tethered to the ground. Paul Rudd plays Adam, a pudgy, trollish guy who means well but underwhelms. He's a loser, if only because he believes it to be so. Enter Evelyn (Weisz), an edgy (well, grad-school art-student edgy) doctoral candidate who takes a liking to Adam. They begin dating; he gains confidence, and contact lenses, and a nose job. (And yes, that evolution is handled with equal lack of subtlety in the film.) Adam's best friend Phillip (Weller) is suspicious of the new-and-improved version, but Phillip's fiancee, Jenny (Mol) -- on whom Adam always had a crush -- has certainly noticed how nicely he seems to fill out his khakis now. The film means to explore society's perceptions about appearance and the great lengths to which we go to mold our features into something other people will like and approve of; the final result is about as revelatory as a freshman's term paper for Intro to Women's Studies. Actually, it's an intentionally banal thesis; LaBute's real ambition is the further exposing of the fundamental cruelties of men and women. And yet, that one's a bit of a no-brainer, too. It helps not a lick that his ensemble characters are mostly dim caricatures; the psychologically complex characters in Your Friends and Neighbors were far better vessels for illuminating the hidden evil in all of our hearts. Save for the film's "big twist" at the end, there's zero complexity here: What you see is what you get, and what you get is awfully dull. None of the actors -- too old to be playing fresh-faced college kids -- seem terribly interested in their roles, save for Weisz, who brings sass and craftiness to her part as the older, mentorlike girlfriend; you see the wheels constantly turning for Evelyn, whereas the other three appear to have nothing but empty space upstairs. That may very well be the point, but it's a rather tiresome and facile one. If LaBute wants to plumb the depths of human unkindness, have at it -- only dig deeper next time.

Kimberley Jones [2003-05-16]

The Charlotte Observer

Posted on Fri, May. 16, 2003

'Shape' sculpted to a keen edge

Director LaBute again wields his unrelenting acuity in dark allegory

By: Lawrence Toppman

"You stepped over the line," says a startled museum guard, watching an interloper approach a statue at the start of "The Shape of Things." No truer opening could be found for a Neil LaBute movie, where unscrupulous characters step over the line of misanthropy and, eventually, over the wrecked psyches of their victims.

The guard is Adam (Paul Rudd), a grad student in Southern California who looks to be about 30 and is drifting carelessly toward some unspecified degree.

The brash interloper is Evelyn (Rachel Weisz). Her long-term plan is to get a master of fine arts diploma; her short-term plan is to spray-paint a red penis on the towering sculpture, whose genitals were covered with a plaster palm leaf by local bluenoses.

Adam falls for her, to the dismay of friends Jenny (Gretchen Mol) and Phil (Frederick Weller). Evelyn isn't tender enough to suit Jenny, who once had a crush on Adam. Phil, his former roommate, prefers less opinionated and more passive female companionship.

Both have to acknowledge over time that Evelyn's turning Adam into a new man. She encourages him to get a sharper haircut, lose weight, trade eyeglasses for contact lenses, even consider plastic surgery for his perfectly pleasant nose. But they wonder about her motives as a bewitching Svengali.

Writer-director LaBute, who adapted his play, has softened his tone since the acidulous "In the Company of Men" and "Your Friends and Neighbors." Yet his observation of human nature is keener than before, his dialogue more attuned to ambiguities.

Could womanizing Phil be jealous that schlumpy Adam has made a conquest? Could Jenny, who has second thoughts about her engagement to Phil, be upset that she's not in Adam's bed? Is their "concern" motivated mostly by envy? (Mol's touching, but Weller's unrelieved nastiness makes you wonder why anybody would spend one day with him.)

The irony is that everyone but Evelyn believes physical appeal is inversely proportional to moral status: As Adam gets handsomer and hipper, he and his friends suspect (mostly unfairly) that he's become a sellout. LaBute has often mocked the perception that beautiful people are better than the rest of us; here he pokes fun at the idea that they must be worse.

Rudd plays Adam as a bouncy, naive and self-deprecating guy, unable to believe his good fortune. Weisz keeps us in doubt about Evelyn's motives, and her character is an attractive, snarled mass of assets and detriments: She's smart but culturally uninformed, assertive but often rude, ready to defend her own principles but just as ready to stomp on others'. She's sure she's right, but so (in an allusion she doesn't recognize) is Shakespeare's Iago.

LaBute fills the film with such references, and we're meant to be smart enough to interpret them. "Play Misty for Me," "A Tale of Two Cities," "Pygmalion" and "Medea" suggest obsession, self-sacrifice, transformation of a loved one and deadly betrayal, and all have their places here.

The opening scene is a broad allegory, as Adam and Eve(lyn) stand before a statue of God. Adam radiates blissful innocence, but the new apple of his eye is about to become the apple of his fall. (Sometimes LaBute can take allegories too far: The aggressive woman's initials are E.A.T.)

The closing scene brings us full circle, as characters stand among less exalted art. "Moralists have no place in an art gallery," says the quote painted on a red wall. LaBute considers that one of his mottoes, too. He may not approve of the manipulative things his characters do to shape each other, but he'd argue they're true to life.

Exclaim!

The Shape of Things

By Kathleen Olmstead

May 13, 2003

Neil LaBute's films often feel like experiments rather than stories; he questions the moral content and ambiguity of relationships, the implications of minor infractions and large deceits. No one is innocent when it comes to personal power struggles. Basically, a group of friends are about to treat each other like sh--. The Shape of Things is only partially successful as a film but it does work as a LaBute experiment; it leaves you feeling slimed but intrigued.

Shy, dumpy English major Adam (Paul Rudd) falls for art student Evelyn (Rachel Weisz), who quickly sets about altering our hero into a more palatable boyfriend. As Adam transforms -- loses weight, gains some self-confidence -- into a new man, his friends, Phillip (Fred Weller) and his fiancee Jenny (Gretchen Mol), change as well. At first they merely react to the new Adam, but it doesn't take long for their relationship to suffer. These characters aren't fleshed out -- they are stereotypes: the college co-ed, the academic, the frat boy, the art student. The truth is hidden in the story somewhere but (as Evelyn points out several times) no one wants to see the "real thing." The Shape of Things was originally produced as a play and it still feels like one -- the actors read their lines theatre-style, as if they were projecting to the back row. The scenes have very simple blocking and as they dissolve from one to the next you can practically see lights raising and falling on stage. It's reminiscent of Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago -- caustically funny and painful to watch.

Evelyn is a pretty despicable character -- and it would be difficult for any actor to portray her sympathetically -- but Weisz's performance ensures we're just as likely to laugh at her. While Rudd and Mol are suitably charming and compassionate, Weisz is stiff and curt. Evelyn's "graduate thesis art project," the alteration of another human being, is the core of The Shape of Things. Unfortunately, Weisz's attempts at rounded American vowels are distracting and it's hard to take her seriously. She is, however, cute and that might just be LaBute's point. We are meant to ask ourselves if we are more attracted to the shape of things than the contents held within. (Alliance Atlantis)

JAM! Movies

Friday, May 16, 2003

In the company of a bad woman

By JIM SLOTEK -- Toronto Sun

**** [4 out of 5]

Here's a question you SHOULDN'T ask someone who's just seen The Shape Of Things, the latest play-turned-film by Neil LaBute: "So, did you enjoy the movie?"

I was impressed by the movie and creeped out by it too. I subsequently thought about it a great deal. But to put it mildly, it is not the feel-good movie of the year. It is also not a date movie.

Those who saw LaBute's misanthropic signature film In The Company Of Men are aware of his scorched earth policy as regards the war between the sexes.

That movie -- wherein men commit almost sociopathic emotional terrorism against women -- is turned on its head in The Shape Of Things, a no-less-creepy and jaundiced view of the human condition, but one in which a female is the clinically remorseless predator.

Beyond that, it delves interestingly into two topics worthy of a night of beery debate. The first is the extent to which any of us is willing to change ourselves in return for love and sex. And the second is the inviolability of art, including art that causes emotional or physical pain and suffering (Hello, Kensington cat-killers!).

In a movie that LaBute has referred to as an episode of Friends gone horribly wrong, indie "it" actor Paul Rudd plays Adam, an overweight, slovenly college schlub in definite need of a makeover. His life is changed -- as it often is for such people -- by the love of a woman. In this case, it's Evelyn (The Mummy's Rachel Weisz), an erratic art student with hard-edged fight-the-power ideas about the creative urge.

Evelyn literally begins to "sculpt" Adam, getting him to exercise, moussing his hair, dressing him preppily, convincing him to get an unnecessary nose job. The changes are met approvingly, at first, by his ex-roommate's sweet fiancee Jenny (Gretchen Mol), a woman who's had an unrequited crush on Adam -- love handles and all -- throughout school. After all, isn't it really cute how women try to change men?

Abrasive ex-roommate Philip (Frederick Weller) is much more cold-eyed about the whole thing, hating Evelyn from the get-go. Evelyn's control over Adam soon extends to expunging these friends from his life.

LaBute's stagey script (his main drawback as a film director) drops hints of pathology early and often. Still, it doesn't prepare you for the denouement, an emotionally-chilling scene of public humiliation that you can consider your just deserts for investing vicarious emotion in fictional characters on film.

(This film is rated 14-A)

Battle of the sexes takes cruel turn in 'Shape,' a twisted-love story

By: Rene Rodriguez

Miami Herald

Published: Friday, May 16, 2003

*** [3 out of 4 stars]

With The Shape of Things, writer-director Neil LaBute returns to his favorite arena -- the battle of the sexes -- with corrosive, bilious results. The movie, which LaBute adapted from his own hit play, has a stagey, affected air about it, and the dialogue occasionally slips into the staccato rhythms of David Mamet. But the artifice, while distracting, doesn't sabotage what may be LaBute's cruelest work to date on the games men and women play with -- and on -- each other.

A variation on Pygmalion, but with an entirely different destination in mind, the movie centers on the relationship between Adam (Paul Rudd), a nerdy, insecure college student who moonlights as a security guard, and Evelyn (Rachel Weisz), a beautiful, headstrong art major who is always going on about the importance of artistic expression.

Although he's initially skeptical of Evelyn's interest in him (``Why would you like me? I'm not anything.''), the sexually inexperienced Adam lets go of his inhibitions and dives into the affair. If Evelyn is always nagging him about his hairstyle, or his choice of clothes, or the excess poundage he's carrying, or even the shape of his nose, it's still a small price to pay to experience the bliss of love. Besides, compromise is an inevitable part of every relationship. But how much is too much?

As its title implies, The Shape of Things is about the way we can't help but judge things by their outward appearance, whether they are a work of art or other human beings. Adam's gradual transformation from wallflower geek to big stud on campus affects the way he's treated by his former roommate (Frederick Weller), who is strangely, vaguely jealous, and his former classmate (Gretchen Mol), who suddenly seems a lot more interested in everything Adam has to say.

They're all in for a cosmic comeuppance, of course: LaBute (In the Company of Men, Your Friends and Neighbors) takes great relish in putting his characters -- and the audience -- through the wringer, and not always fairly, either. Although he's often described as a misanthrope, I don't think LaBute hates people: He just abhors deceit and naivete in equal measure, and he's merciless when it's time to dole out punishment. Late in the film, when a character looks directly into the camera, utters a familiar epithet and flips us the middle finger, LaBute may well be chastising the viewer for our own gullibility, for wanting to believe in the inherent goodness of people, or at least these characters.

There are no innocent victims in The Shape of Things, because LaBute knows that even the most faithful, moral person is not above succumbing to temptation, especially -- most of all -- lust. We may be outwardly civilized and well-mannered and schooled, but at heart, we are also animals, capable of rationalizing the most horrible acts for our own selfish needs. It is our basest nature that fascinates LaBute, a pessimistic poet who knows how to work over the audience. In The Shape of Things, love doesn't just hurt: It bites, and bites deep.

A Movie Eye Member Movie Review!

Author: Frank Ochieng (Featured Critic)

Critic's Grade: B+

Frank's film tip: All things considered, everything seems ship-SHAPE in fearless filmmaker Neil LaBute's glorious dark relationship comedy that mingles with the questionable taste concerning romance and art

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 rates this film: *** stars (out of 4 stars)

Movie Crazed

Review by: Guy Flatley

THE SHAPE OF THINGS

* [1 out of 4 stars]

Evelyn, a sexy feminist Art major, disapproves of the fig leaf adorning a statue in the campus museum and is about to express her disapproval with a spray can. When another student--a nerd who works part-time as a museum guard--approaches her and attempts to persuade her to put down that can, she throws him a curve. First, she induces him to peep behind the leaf at the concealed bulge of male anatomy, and then she makes it clear that she will do her duty as a feminist and, yes, press the spray button. Obviously, this could be the start of something big. And it is. Soon feminist artiste Evelyn has student/guard Adam in her steel grip, defenseless and spineless as a hunk of clay.

What is this--"American Pie Goes to College"? No, it's the latest chapter in writer-director Neil LaBute's chronicle of the war between the sexes. This time, the female (Rachel Weisz as Evelyn) is the venomous aggressor, manipulating, tricking and betraying Adam (Paul Rudd). Here are a few of the things Evelyn does to Adam: she allows him to take a shot at playing the hot stud, but only on the condition that their bedroom romps be videotaped; she sneaks behind his back and lures his best friend into the sack, and then breaks up the friendship; she persuades him to have a nose job he most certainly does not need; and she humiliates him at a college art show by baring the secrets--most notably, the videotaped ones--of their relationship. It's okay, though, because everything she's done has been for her thesis. And presumably she gets an A+ for her efforts.

It would be a pleasure, but also a gross distortion of the truth, to report that this portrait of the artist as a young bitch packed the brilliant malice of LaBute's "In the Company of Men" and "Your Friends & Neighbors," those twin chamber dramas that prompted us to stand up and scream "male chauvinist pig." Or that it contained even a shred of "Nurse Betty's" engagingly dark nuttiness. "The Shape of Things," based on LaBute's modest stage success, comes close to making "Possession," his sappy 2002 misfire, look sharp.

The actors, including Frederick Weller and Gretchen Mol as the cheating friend and his fiancee, do what they can with the humorless, one-dimensional material, but it's not nearly enough. Let's hope this nasty, predictable and punishing film is not a portent of things to come from LaBute, who not so long ago seemed to be among our most promising directors.

New York Magazine

Out of Shape

In The Shape of Things, Neil LaBute shows he can create women behaving as badly as men; the pageant of mutant humanity lengthens in the blockbuster X2: X-Men United.

By Peter Rainer

Why do you like me?" the pathologically uncool college student Adam (Paul Rudd) asks his predatory girlfriend, Evelyn (Rachel Weisz), early in Neil LaBute's The Shape of Things. Then he adds the kicker: "I'm not anything." Adam is practically the Uber-dweeb. His name alone symbolizes his status; he's the first among men, and a sorry lot they are. LaBute's debut film, In the Company of Men, was widely viewed as a condemnation of male privilege--the men in the movie systematically burnished and then dismantled the soul of an unsuspecting wallflower--and The Shape of Things, which began its life as a stage play, is being touted as that film's companion piece. This time out, a ravenous female tears apart the woebegone male. LaBute would like us to know that neither sex has a monopoly on behaving very, very badly. Alert the media!

Evelyn first meets Adam in the campus art museum, where he moonlights as a guard. A libertine with an agenda, she wants to deface a male statue where the genitals have been strategically covered up. Cowed but awed, Adam looks the other way. Evelyn is working on her M.F.A. in art, and she takes up Adam as a personal cause, eventually seducing him into a total makeover--he drops pounds, gets a nose job, dresses smartly, and even, at her coaxing, distances himself from his best friends, Philip (Frederick Weller), a former roommate who takes an instant dislike to Evelyn, and Philip's fiancee, Jenny (Gretchen Mol), who has become a soul mate for Adam. Throughout it all, we are made to wonder why Evelyn and Adam are together. He tells her she's pretty amazing, but his entrancement is presented as a species of delusion. Perhaps they are supposed to be the classic couple whose mismatch represents the perfect match.

"Director Neil LaBute may think he's laying it on the line for us, but his cold, hard truths about human behavior aren't exactly eye-openers."

Maybe they also represent an extreme example of how two people in a relationship can rejigger their psyches. But because their relationship is so airless and contrived--so devoid of the messiness of any true give- and-take--it never hits home emotionally. LaBute is attacking our society's obsession with the surface of things, whether it be a painter's canvas or a human one, but his drama is, in itself, relentlessly superficial. What really seems to be going on is that LaBute, for all his vaunted knowingness and sophistication, is venting his bile on the culture of modernism. He's a scold posing as a provocateur, and his martinet's touch is especially pronounced in the performances, which seem overcalibrated even when one considers that the same actors already performed their roles in London and Off Broadway prior to filming. The avant-garde world is castigated in The Shape of Things as a funhouse of moral decadence where artists chew up and spit out people mercilessly in their art. But, in his plays and in his movies based on his own material, LaBute is fond of utilizing people as glorified puppets in order to prop up his misanthropic theses. There's a clinical severity to his method, and a fatuousness, too: He may think he's laying it on the line for us, but his cold, hard truths about human behavior aren't exactly eye-openers. For him, grand revelations about the depravities of men and women are the end points of drama. For a better artist, they would only be the starting point.

When it comes to showing off humanity's ills, X2: X-Men United is much more effective than LaBute's film--even if the humanity on view is chockablock with mutants. The old standbys from the first X-Men movie are on hand, including Hugh Jackman's stiletto-armed Wolverine and Ian McKellen's murderously droll Magneto (incarcerated in an all-plastic prison). As the shape-shifting Mystique, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos gratifyingly morphs into her very own svelte self in a scene that might have been filched from Femme Fatale. None of these X-ers seem any happier this time. Such is the fate of those condemned to be outcasts inhabiting a movie franchise. The best new addition to the corp is Alan Cumming's Nightcrawler. His pointy ears, yellow eyes, and blue skin make him the most creepily beautiful presence in the pageant. In an effort to be true to the movie's Marvel Comics origins, director Bryan Singer has accompanied Nightcrawler's teleportations with the comic-approved sound effect bampf! (This according to my press notes.) To my ears, it sounded more like pffft! But then again, I was having trouble with my hearing after Siryn, a new addition, unleased her eardrum-shattering supersonic scream. If the theater you see X2 in features one of those mega-decibel spots for its Dolby sound system, you might want to wad yourself with cotton beforehand.

Patrice Leconte's Man on a Train plays out a Patricia Highsmith--like premise: Manesquier (Jean Rochefort), a companionable, retired schoolteacher living alone in a French provincial town, accepts into his rundown estate a gruff gangster, Milan (Johnny Hallyday), who is planning to rob a local bank and has nowhere else to lodge. Improbably, the two hit it off; each perceives in the other the life he might have lived had things gone differently. Milan teaches Manesquier how to shoot a pistol, and the instructor responds with poetry recitations. I know this sounds precious--it is precious--but the actors are such opposites in style and temperament that their pairing is made to seem emblematic. As in many a French movie, especially crime movie, the philosophe and the crook turn out to be each other's mirror image.

Most music documentaries go in for too much jabber and not enough performance. Not so Only the Strong Survive, which showcases some of the best soul and R&B singers from the late sixties and early seventies--Wilson Pickett, Sam Moore, Jerry Butler, Ann Peebles, Mary Wilson, the Chi-Lites, Isaac Hayes, the late Rufus Thomas and his daughter Carla--and lets them loose. Directors D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, with the assistance of journalist (and former New York contributor) Roger Friedman, understand that the best way for these people to tell their story is ultimately through their sound. This is no antique show: Faced with an audience, they are still amazingly vital and sometimes amazingly lewd. When Rufus Thomas wails "Walking the Dog," you know exactly what it is he's walking.

Planet Sick-Boy

Review by: Jon Popick

PS-B RATING: 7 [out of 10]

After making two films from the scripts of other writers (the decent Nurse Betty and the monstrous Possession), writer-director Neil LaBute returns to the edgy, feel-bad material that made him a darling of the indie film world. The Shape of Things is much more like In the Company of Men and Your Friends & Neighbors, and that should make filmgoers happy, even if most of them will exit the theatre clutching their stomachs as if they were just sucker-punched by Nelson Muntz.

Things, which is based on LaBute's play and features role reprisals by all four lead actors, is set at Mercy College on the coast of Southern California. The film is broken into nine scenes, which are completely devoid of anything except dialogue and ambient noise, and separated by very loud Elvis Costello songs.

We get to hear the first song through the headphones of Evelyn (Rachel Weisz, Confidence), who is busy snapping pictures of a Zeus statue at Mercy's museum. To get a closer shot, she steps over the velvet rope, which draws the attention of a security guard named Adam (Paul Rudd, The Chateau). Evelyn refuses to stay on the proper side of the rope, and even threatens to deface the statue because it's "false art." Adam pleads with her to hold off, at least until his shift is over. If that's not a meet-cute, I don't know what is (I won't even get into the Adam and Eve thing).

The two begin to talk, and we learn Evelyn is an MFA student, while Adam is a slightly nerdy, considerably pudgy and incredibly uptight student who works part-time at a video store to avoid having a social life. They're the perfect yin-yang -- Evelyn brimming with confidence, and Adam wallowing in insecurity. Somehow, he musters the courage to ask her out, and she shocks him by accepting.

Flash forward several weeks, and the two are inseparable lovebirds, which draws nothing but slack-jawed stares from Adam's friends, the engaged Jenny (Gretchen Mol, Sweet and Lowdown) and Phillip (Fred Weller, The Business of Strangers). Actually, they're not sure which is more surprising - that Adam seems to be in love, or that he's slowly mutating into a good-looking, self-assured stranger. Adam loses weight, then his glasses. He gets a new haircut and abandons his ratty corduroy jacket for a reversible number from Tommy Hilfiger. It's like watching Extreme Makeover!

Before you start thinking Things might be a typical romantic comedy (i.e., a sex-swapped Pygmalion), keep in mind we're dealing with LaBute. That means two things: A cadence that will remind astute ears of David Mamet, and a slowly building nausea as the film reaches what should be a fairly predictable - yet still hopelessly devastating - conclusion. Things seems a lot like LaBute's response to the Nancy-Boy critics and viewers who couldn't handle a deaf woman being the butt of the joke in his award-winning In the Company of Men. Todd Solondz used a similar approach in Storytelling, responding to criticism that his previous films were titillating just to be controversial. LaBute perfectly mimics this in a scene where Evelyn and Phillip argue over the ultimately defaced Zeus statue.

To date, I think Things is by far the best ensemble acting I've seen in 2003, and a lot of that is because these four actors are very familiar with their roles from LaBute's stage production. The actors wear their parts like a glove, and this is never more evident in the aforementioned Zeus argument, or the scene where Adam and Jenny talk around their personal issues without even scratching the surface of what they really mean (a/k/a Mamet-speak). Even without the Brando-esque cottonballs or the fat suit, Rudd steals the show here, which makes you wonder why he's been slumming on Friends lately.

by Jon Ridge, rec.arts.movies.reviews

Efficient is the best word I can think of to describe Neil Labute's THE SHAPE OF THINGS. It has a point to make, and finds a way to make it without ever really getting very deep. There are numerous discussions about relationships and all things having to do. The dialogue is sharp and intelligent. The ending - while not hardly as surprising as it thinks it's going to be - does pack a visceral punch. But, the effect isn't lasting. It will strike up a gender debate afterward, sure, it's designed to. And you won't remember the conversation in the morning.

The delectable Rachel Weisz (dressed-down and h.o.t.) plays Evelyn, an art major who captivates an awkward museum employee, Adam (Paul Rudd), one day as she is about to spray paint a display. He asks her politely not to ruin his day, and I liked her response: "I wasn't planning on it, but I'm not completely against it, either." She's clearly a troublemaker. And, a turn on. It would be quite easy to fall under the spell of any woman who'll get genuflect and lick your thigh in a public place, but we get the feeling she has this guy the moment she abused her museum privileges.

Several dates later, Adam has gone from chubby and muss-haired to stud. Evelyn is to blame (in a good way), though neither of them acknowledges that. She suggests this or that to Adam, and he does it, no questions, like a puppy desperate for attention. Which he is, of course. Evelyn sees cosmetic potential in the scruffy Adam, and dives right in. As a project? Because she truly cares? We sense she's calculating. Opinionated, most definitely. Evelyn tests people; some have their patience tried and can't handle it, and lash out. To which she simply responds, "We're just talking." This is the sexiest I've ever seen Weisz; she affects a sort of smoky, almost Jennifer Tilly-sounding tint in her voice. And, I couldn't help but agree with her in thinking there's nothing worse than indifference when it comes to how someone views art.

I enjoyed not knowing where I was being lead by SHAPE OF THINGS. It's clear where the film is headed, but the way it's paced there doesn't appear to be any loft agenda, i.e. no particular story to tell, so it's easy to sit back and listen to these people talk. The surface can't necessarily always be trusted, of course: like people, we observe it in a certain light, we're told things, but do we ever really know with any certainty what's going on behind the expression? Is it possible to really know a person? I won't say if the film argues in favor of a yes or no to that question, but the idea is intriguing. As Evelyn states again and again, life is subjective, anyway; however we perceive things, then that's the way they are. Doesn't make a difference if something wasn't true, in that if it was for you, at the time, then where's the lie? Regardless what you happened to find out later.

I wish THE SHAPE OF THINGS were even more stinging and harsh than it turns out. Even with the almost surreality of its conclusion. The film lacks an extra added level of viciousness, perhaps because it would not have been as palatable for mainstream audiences, I don't know. Or, maybe the outcome has enough moral cruelty, and I just wasn't that interested in Adam to really give a damn. Props, however, to Labute's script for keeping Adam essentially the same guy before and after his make-over. And, Rudd plays the hell out of him. I don't know.. there was one choice he could have made, be acceptant and attempt to begin again, that would have been just utterly demeaning. I was waiting for it. Didn't get it.

THE SHAPE OF THINGS is provocative, but light weight.

Reel Film Reviews

The Shape of Things (May 15/03)

After essentially working as a director-for-hire on Nurse Betty and Possession, The Shape of Things marks Neil LaBute's return to his own material. Like In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors, The Shape of Things introduces us to a variety of characters that - through the course of the film - turn out to be far more complex than we ever could've imagined.

Paul Rudd stars as Adam, an average-looking nice guy working two jobs to put himself through college. At one such job, as a museum security guard, he encounters a woman about to deface an ancient statue. Evelyn (Rachel Weisz) believes the piece is "false art" - since the figure's genitals have been covered up - and after talking with Adam for a while, finally gives him her number. The two begin to date, and Adam begins to improve his physical appearance (he loses weight, stops wearing a ratty old coat, etc). These changes disturb his two friends, Jenny (Gretchen Mol) and Philip (Frederick Weller), but Adam is unwilling to listen to their advice as he is falling in love with Evelyn.

Part of what makes The Shape of Things work as well as it does - though LaBute's In the Company of Men still remains his most accomplished and riveting film - is LaBute's undeniable ear for dialogue. The key to LaBute's success is his seemingly effortless ability to write dialogue that sounds the way people talk. There are some instances in which it sounds forced, usually involving expository matters, but that's to be expected from a filmed play. With The Shape of Things, LaBute's done a fantastic job of creating four distinct characters who aren't easily identifiable. Though it may initially seem like we know exactly who to root for, as the film progresses, it becomes obvious that that's just not the case. And by the time the end rolls around, LaBute's created a situation in which we've got to re-examine what we've just seen; it's only then do we completely understand the motivations of all the players.

Of course, LaBute's screenplay would mean nothing if he hadn't populated the flick with some excellent actors, and he's done exactly that. It probably doesn't hurt that each of these four actors originated their roles on the London stage, where they performed The Shape of Things for about a year. There isn't a weak link in this cast, and Rudd (in particular) is a standout. Best known for playing Phoebe's boyfriend Mike on Friends, Rudd is once again playing an affable nice guy - but there's a lot more to Adam than we might originally suspect. Aside from an astoundingly vitriolic speech near the end of the film, Adam is the sort of person that just wants to be liked by everyone around him. There's a sequence in which his two friends finally meet Evelyn, and even though it's quite clear her beliefs mean nothing to Philip, Adam tries his best to keep the peace. Rudd is incredibly likable in this role, which makes the final revelation that much harder to take. Weisz is just as good as Evelyn, a character that spends virtually the entire film straddling the line between good and evil; we're not quite sure whether she's changing Adam for his benefit or hers until the very end, and Weisz does a nice job of portraying that duality. Mol and Weller are effective as the two friends, with Weller providing the film's comic relief as an almost over-the-top alpha male.

LaBute is at his best when examining humanity through his pessimistic point-of-view, and though his downbeat perspective might be a little overwhelming for some viewers, it's certainly a welcome breather from the comparitively light tone of most movies. The Shape of Things is the kind of movie that'll leave you talking and thinking about it for hours afterwards, and for that alone, it deserves some recognition.

*** out of ****

(c) David Nusair 2003

Salon.com

"The Shape of Things"

Neil LaBute's latest, about a wretched art student who makes over her boyfriend, could be the edgiest film of the year -- if the year were 1982.

By Andrew O'Hehir

May 9, 2003

There's often a kind of emotional truth to Neil LaBute's earnest, mannered, fakey-dark dramas. As we used to say in '70s California, he's coming from someplace real, man. In his new film, "The Shape of Things," he absolutely nails the kind of horrific college-age friendship between two guys who actually don't like each other at all, whose every moment together is driven by competition, hatred, misogyny, homoerotic desire and homophobia, all at the same time. If you've ever had that kind of friendship, or even been around it, it'll set your teeth on edge.

But the two guys themselves, a spineless nebbish named Adam (Paul Rudd) and a frat-boy a**hole named Phillip (Frederick Weller), never seem even remotely like real people. They're stock characters who seem to have wandered in from other movies -- Adam from Woody Allen's "Sleepers," maybe, and Phillip from, like, "St. Elmo's Fire" -- and been handed this weird script full of torment and angst and painfully artificial dialogue. Not to mention bad feminist performance art, college productions of "Medea," cavernous coffee bars, Elvis Costello songs (circa "This Year's Model") and dueling psycho-bitch girlfriends. This might be the edgiest film of the year -- if the year were 1982.

The Shape of Things (2003)

Reviewed by Jeff Walls

There is an interesting premise to The Shape of Things, the new film from writer/director Neil LaBute (Nurse Betty; Possession). Unfortunately, the film--based on LaBute's own play--suffers from a similar problem that most stage-to-screen adaptations. Namely, too much talk, too little action.

Adam (Paul Rudd) is a shy, nerdy college student who supports himself by keeping two part-time jobs; one at a video store, and another at the museum. One day as he is just about to leave his museum job, he is confronted with a beautiful art student, Evelyn (Rachel Weisz), who is about to vandalize a sculpture of Zeus. Adam is captivated by Evelyn and soon they are dating (oh, and the sculpture was vandalized).

Not long after they start dating, Adam's friends--former roommate Phillip (Fred Weller) and his fiancee Jenny (Gretchen Mol)--start to notice some changes. Adam has lost weight, cut his hair, started wearing hipper clothing and even got a nose job, while telling them he had just fallen. This only adds to Phillip and Jenny's suspicions about Evelyn, whom they both disliked from the beginning. It also rekindles an attraction Jenny had for Adam before Phillip was even in the picture. The changes start to break the three friends apart, but the devastating revelation is yet to come.

Like most films based on stage plays, the movie mostly involves the four principle characters sitting around and talking. In fact, this movie is so stagy that only the four principle actors have any dialogue. This is really obvious in a latter scene when three of the principle characters storm out of a lecture. Common sense might indicate that others would leave also, but they can't, they're not getting paid to do anything but sit in the audience.

The most important element for stagy films is acting. There could be no action but talking in a film, but as long as the acting is good, the film will still be entertaining (see Glengarry Glen Ross). The acting in The Shape of Things, unfortunately, doesn't pull it through. At some points the acting is so bad it is laughable. Of course, this is debatable. Other critics have praised the acting in this film because it is real. Unfortunately for me, it often seemed so real that I felt maybe I could pursue an acting career.

Add to that the fact that I saw the supposedly brilliant twist of an ending coming a mile away (you can probably figure it out from the preview) and this film just failed to catch my interest. There are some good sociological arguments, but they could probably have been presented in a more entertaining way. I give it a C-.

Reviewed on 5/11/03

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

The Shape of Things

By JOE WILLIAMS
Post-Dispatch

05/09/2003

Neil LaBute's "In the Company of Men" was a wicked caricature of male cruelty. His follow-up, "Your Friends and Neighbors," implicated yuppie couples in a dance of deception. If you can guess who's next on LaBute's list of liars, you might anticipate the nasty surprise in "The Shape of Things," a cinematic sucker punch that requires the audience to do much of the work on the ride home.

Unlike "In the Company of Men," LaBute's latest film doesn't let us in on the joke until it has destroyed a life. But whether that life was truly destroyed is part of a sophist argument that saves the movie from pure perversity.

When collegian-cum-security guard Adam (Paul Rudd) meets fellow student Evelyn (Rachel Weisz), she is on the verge of spray-painting a statue in the university art gallery. Adam is such a self-effacing schlub that he doesn't stop her, but he trades his sense of duty for a date.

Soon they are a couple, albeit a strangely mismatched one. Adam is tubby and trivial; Evelyn is a sleek bohemian with hair-trigger convictions about art and culture. Adam wonders aloud why they are together, a sentiment that is echoed by Adam's soon-to-be-married friends Jenny and Phillip (Gretchen Mol and Fred Weller). When the engaged couple invites Adam and Evelyn for dinner, Phillip the jock insults Evelyn the artist, and Adam is forced to take sides.

In the ensuing weeks, not only does Adam forsake Phillip - and briefly rekindle a flirtation with Jenny - he lets himself be molded by Evelyn into something more socially acceptable. He loses weight, dresses sportier and undergoes a nose job. Not insignificantly, he gets a tattoo of Evelyn's initials that resembles a brand.

This realigning of allegiances is banal to the point of creepiness, as the characters in LaBute's adapted stage play express their puny emotions in cliches derived from bad TV. In the final twist, the cutesy cliches are exchanged for intellectual ones.

The shock ending ostensibly justifies the preceding 90 minutes of undergraduate angst, and in retrospect we see that LaBute had planted clever clues. It's deliciously mean-spirited and bountiful food for after-movie argument. But in embracing this slow-to-develop drama for its potent punch line, we are being far more charitable than the director.

*** (out of four)

Sun Newspapers of Cleveland

Same old 'Shape'

It's hard to imagine a writer as gifted as Neil LaBute losing his stuff, but "The Shape of Things" carries a whiff of burnout. His anti-chauvinist mantra is ladled on so thick here that you leave the screening room mumbling, "Yeah, Neil, men are pigs. I got it."

What hurts is that the protagonist doesn't deserve to be. The faceless Adam (played understatedly well by Paul Rudd) is a student working part-time at a museum, a nondescript fellow moseying through life until he meets Evelyn (Rachel Weisz), a somewhat vindictive artist. She's bent on defacing a statue in risque fashion until a few moments of cryptic conversation with Adam. Minutes later, she's instead spray-painting her phone number on his jacket.

LaBute laboriously translates his stage play without utilizing the screen's magic. Action shifts dismally before drab backgrounds; the only thing missing is a curtain falling between scenes. It does equally little to heighten any emotion to exchanges between Evelyn and Adam, who becomes something of a work in progress.

The talk builds to LaBute's trump card--a devilish one, for sure, but one that doesn't surprise considering the shape of things with his pen in hand.

- Stan Urankar

$ $ $ [3 out of 4]

The Shape of Things, de Neil LaBute: Prendre une romance jolie, et la tordre. Machiavelique.

15 mai 2003

The Shape of Things

Esprit tordu

Juliette Ruer

Parce qu'on se demandait, apres In the Company of Men de Neil LaBute, si des femmes pouvaient agir de la sorte, l'auteur repond avec The Shape of Things. Souvenez-vous: la morgue d'Aaron Eckart, son cynisme, et surtout son implacable logique. Meme logique cerebrale pour cette histoire tres Neil LaBute, un des plus interessants metteurs en scene de theatre et de cinema aux etats-Unis en ce moment, egalement auteur de l'excellent Your Friends & Neighbors, de Nurse Betty et de cette erreur qu'etait l'adaptation de Possession, d'apres le livre d'A.S. Byatt.

La construction de cette romance melodramatique tres tordue rappelle a quel point LaBute est brillant pour mener le spectateur par le bout du nez. Dans un style simple, tres bavard en information et en sous-texte, il controle le rythme de son histoire sans defaillir. On s'arrete ou il veut, on regarde ce qu'il veut mettre en evidence, on deduit ce qu'il veut que l'on deduise... Machiavelique. On sent cependant l'effet du theatre filme. Le film a ete realise apres juste neuf mois de representations sur scene en Angleterre et aux etats-Unis, avec les memes acteurs. Une distribution courte, pas de scenes-tampons, une deferlante de champs, contrechamps: le film est une partie de ping-pong continue entre quatre excellents acteurs (un peu de surjeu du cote de Paul Rudd), seulement un rien trop ages pour etre des etudiants. Si l'adaptation au cinema ressemble a une copie filmee de la piece, on peut mettre ca sur l'envie de LaBute de diffuser son histoire a un plus grand nombre. Bonne idee, le divertissement en vaut la peine.

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