surreal, downbeat, and rather silly movie -- but fun

Rating: 7/10 (7 June 2000)

I liked this movie because the performances were so good, and because the first part of the movie was just about perfect at creating an atmosphere of yuppie existential nausea. I always like Edward Norton a lot, for a change Brad Pitt gives a decent performance, and the plot is nicely twisted, but ultimately the movie is just dumb. I think that a movie like this can be more than an exercise in style only when the plot makes some sense. The plot in this movie makes no more sense than something like "Atlas Shrugged", so the movie is just high class junk. It's pretty hard to discuss the plot without putting in a spoiler, and since the key plot point wasn't obvious to me until shortly before it was exposed (and I had fun figuring out what was going on), I don't want to ruin it for other people. Just don't be fooled by the early part of the movie into thinking that it has anything deep to say.