The last great black comedy of the millennium

Rating: 10/10 (13 November 1999)

Fight Club is the most hilarious, profound p***-take of a film I have ever seen. The film relentlessly lampoons the manner in which ordinary men create alter egos in their minds to fulfill their dreams of transcendence, while simultaneously pointing up the puerile nature of the teenage Ayn Rand rhetoric of rebellion. Finally someone has made a film that points out that extreme experiences do not bring some mystic wisdom, that the superficially rebellious are often the most unoriginal and conformist, and that an asshole with big ideas is just an even bigger asshole.
The sensational twist, which I will not reveal here, is not the unnecessary piece of cleverness that some allege. Instead, all I will say is that it is absolutely pivotal to the film's true message. Moreover, Marsha is *meant* to be an undercharacterised stereotype - she's exactly the kind of sexually perverse screw-up that men whose lives lack excitement fantasise of meeting.