Another Fincher fairy tale

Rating: 1/10 (14 August 2000)

I've heard many people say (and seen many reviews written) that Fight Club is a classic. Mind blowing. Completely fresh. Sorry, but I just don't see it.
I'll start with the positives. Ed Norton and Brad Pitt were excellent. Pitt perfectly captures the super-cool, no attachments, nothing-to-lose attitude that so many young guys have before they get old and come back down to earth. Norton is also perfect as the uptight, frustrated yuppie bored with life's vapidity. Even Helena Bonham Carter, who I normally don't much care for, was okay in the generic girlfriend role.
Now on to the negatives. The story is just utterly preposterous. Maybe even more so than Fincher's last absurd movie, The Game. The movie really lost all believability when Fight Club turns into the cult, Project Mayhem. Although it has a nice twist ending with the Pitt/Norton dynamic, I couldn't buy that they could get legions of grown men to become such mindless, fanatical followers. Pitt's charismatic, but not nearly charismatic to cover up the fact his philosophy is tired and his idea of subversion is nothing except vandalism and petty theft. The movie has pretensions of making a statement about consumerism but I thought it made them pretty succintly with the intro where Norton describes his perfect condo, filled with things he really didn't need. Everything else is overkill. And the final big plan to blow up (I won't say what in case you haven't seen the movie yet) in order to level the world playing field is...well....pointless.
Just like The Game, Fincher takes some good parts and sews them into a tapestry of mediocrity. I give it 6 out of 10.