I chose not to see Joel Schumacher‘s Twelve at Sundance 2010 for what I felt was a pretty good reason. As much as I’d like to see Schumacher proverbially bounce back with another Tigerland, which I thought was better than decent, I’m very suspicious of moral-crisis-leading-to-moral-wakeup dramas about jaded rich kids doing the old Less Than Zero, or an approximation of same.

I’m not saying Twelve is one thing or another, not having seen it, but the milieu, which I feel I’ve come to know from previous films mining the same turf, is fairly repugnant. Plus I’ve developed an aversion to any films starring any Culkins. Plus I’m a a little afraid these days of Ellen Barkin. (And this was before I’d seen Shit Year, of course.)

In a piece called “Is Joel Schumacher’s Twelve Worse Than Batman and Robin?”, Cinematical‘s Eric Davis wrote that “you know something is off when [a] gritty, drug-fueled ensemble drama premieres at the Sundance Film Festival to a crowd full of critics who can’t stop laughing. I happened to be one of the folks in that first press screening for Twelve, and I can tell you straight up that this flick is a mess. Not only are there too many characters and too many random storylines, but you don’t care about any of it.”