Vastly overrated film

Rating: 4/10 (16 August 2006)

This movie is so dreary and pretentious it's difficult to sit through, at least for me. Spoiler: I can see that a character could convince himself that he's someone else or that a fictional character could exist in his mind. I find it completely implausible that all the people around him would be fascinated and inspired by his delusion while watching him beat himself up in a parking lot, or that he would be able to inspire these same people to help him cover up his own fictional character's non-existence, and that they would go out and blow up buildings for him. The screenplay asks you to believe this. A friend of mine compared this film to Memento which has a similar belief by the main character, but his self-made reality isn't encouraged by anyone else except in cases where they can exploit him. Fight Club has some interesting ideas but I'd call it a mildly interesting failure.