Well, the poster's cool.

Rating: 3/10 (18 April 2000)

The poster for American Psycho is incredible.
The film, on the other hand, is so pointless it's almost difficult to sum up.
There are certainly many people who will enjoy this movie, assuming there are a large number of serial killers in the world. Because, frankly, unless you find brutal murder funny, there's not much redeeming about this movie.
From the opening, we meet Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale). He's well-dressed, has perfect hair, and a penchant for brutally murdering people. This brings us to our first flaw. Director Mary Harron would like you to believe that he's a nice normal guy and then really shock you with that first murder scene. In fact, I was hoping for someone to get killed just so we could get on with her pithy little movie.
Every character in this movie is simply uninteresting. Reese Witherspoon appears at Patrick's girlfriend, and phones in her performance. Chloe Sevigny is superfluous as Patrick's secretary, and Jared Leto is simply in the movie because he sort of looks like Christian Bale.
Bale, on the other hand, does a good job of making me hate his character. Then again, he doesn't do it correctly. I hate this guy not because he kills people, but because he isn't believable. He reeks of phoniness 24/7, and the entire film, we watch as Bale tries to hide his grin, as if he's saying "mommy, I'm naughty".
So, while the audience sits there, Bale kills lots of people, and apparently it's funny. The audience who previewed this with me was roaring, as if this was some masterwork of Groucho Marx (who probably could have done a better chainsaw gag if given the chance).
Perhaps the most awful thing about this movie is that it tries to be so witty, when in fact, it's just stupid. Before he kills his victims, Patrick talks about 80s music, that is simply stuck on the soundtrack to make us think it's the 80s, as if it mattered.
This is a wonderful date movie, if you're dating Ted Bundy, or if your idea of a fun evening is Robert Palmer and Huey Lewis intermixed with brutal murder.
I give this movie 1 star out of 5. A bad screenplay, and a talented, but wasted cast leave this Psycho in solitary.