Art School Confidential

All Jerome ever wanted was to be the world's greatest artist, just like his idol Pablo Picasso. Finally far from high school and all its narrow-mindedness, Jerome hopes to make it big in the art world. But once he arrives at art school, he's appalled by the low standards and his peers' total lack of talent. In walks Bardo, who quickly explains to Jerome the highs and lows of higher education. We get the usual Higher Learning meets Mean Girls class system: vegans, lesbians, ass-kissers, etc. Just when Jerome is about to lose all hope for humanity, he meets sexy artist model Audrey, who he falls madly in love with. As soon as this happens, in comes Jonah, a hunky painter with a knack for drawing so crudely that it's considered high-art. Crushed, Jerome hatches a plan to make a name for himself, as well as win the heart of shallow Audrey. And, oh yeah, there's also a serial strangler loose on campus.

Don't get me wrong, I always dig the Zwig, but this time around he's made something that's truly hard to appreciate. After hearing some negative buzz about the film, I was relieved to see that the first half is actually pretty good. One could argue that it's all just one extended sequence from the Ghost World summer/art school segments, but the jokes are still funny and the cast -- including John Malcovich, Steve Buscemi, Angelica Houston, and Jim Broadbent -- is solid. Fortunately, most of these guys turn out some great performances, notably Malcovich (as a professor, who only paints triangles) and Broadbent (as a drunken killer).

As I was saying, the first half of the film is light, brisk, and humorous. And then along comes the second half, which is totally atonal and comedically/narratively inferior to the first half. Our hero is now this sadistic character, who just isn't all that believable. Blame the writers or blame actor Max Minghella -- yes, Anthony's son -- who's really not that convincing. You could argue that this was all intentional as some self-conscious narrative snafu. You could even go one step further and say that Jerome is supposed to be this wormy little prick of a protagonist, but the execution just doesn't cut it. I'm all for narrative experimentation, but a little sincerity would've gone a long way.

After all is said and done, we get two films that really don't mesh well together. Truth be told, I don't think anything could mesh well with the second half of this film, which is frustratingly underdeveloped. The sum could be seen as a sort of (arguably self-conscious) superficial portrayal of academic artists, but at least the first half is funny. The latter half is unfunny, uneventful, and well, un-everything.

The extras are decent, but a commentary track would have been helpful. We do get 13 deleted scenes, 5 minutes of zany bloopers, a ho-hum 8-minute-making of, and, lastly, 7 minutes of footage from the Sundance Film Festival. There are some nifty stories from the likes of Zwigoff and Malkovich, but all and all this is pretty drab stuff. Kinda like the movie. -- Neil Karassik