Another Emperor's New Clothes

Rating: 2/10 (26 March 2009)

It's amazing that anyone thought this was watch-able, never mind brilliant. The acting, camera work and music are all good, but the story is so absurd, it had me laughing out loud. I can understand that a fight club could come to be, but this story has it wrapped up in anti-consumerism  and other heady subjects. It just doesn't fly. Show me one backyard boxing enthusiast with these intellectual ideals. They're in it for the fighting. At least show me how the first fight club member was inducted. Two guys start it and the next thing you know there are a hundred members willing to die for their leader. When did that and happen and how? These are huge unanswered questions and without the answers it makes the whole thing seem so implausible that I could not suspend my disbelief.
The thing about the body organs was shoe-horned in to give some novel-like cohesiveness, but when they transferred it using statements like, "This is Jack's complete lack of surprise," it became a ridiculous sophomoric device. The attempts at humor were embarrassing. It's good to add some humor to lighten the tension, but here the gags seemed to be dropped in from a Farrelly Brothers movie and were so out-of-place that it seemed that the movie had an identity crisis. Also, the gags were childish and weren't funny. Helena Bonham Carter's character was not only completely unbelievable, but also superfluous. The character could be removed and the overall story would not change one bit. So, why is this character here? I found all the characters to be unbelievable and absurd. Their motivations and dialog made little or no sense at all. Sometimes the dialog and narration seemed to be selected just to make a character say something provocative, even if it made no sense. The scenes where Ed Norton was beating himself up was like watching a MST3K episode, only I was filling in the commentary. And near the end we get a bizarre twist that's really just a cheap trick by the filmmaker. I felt cheated because I was led down a path without enough information to put together the reality. In "The Sixth Sense" or "A Beautiful Mind", they left the door open, so at the end you realize all the info was there. In "Fight Club" you are summarily duped. Overall, this film seems like the work of an edgy high school student  all style, no substance and a bunch of quirky, edgy characters that couldn't possibly exist.