Very loosely based on the novel of the same name by Bret Easton Ellis, Less Than Zero features Andrew McCarthy as Clay, a university student who is coming home to LA for the first time at Christmas. He is dismayed to find that his high school girlfriend Blair is knocking boots with his friend Julian who is now a drug addict in a heap load of debt. This debt forces Julian into prostitution and also into hiding from his dealer Rip. There is a whole heap of trouble in store for Julian, but Blair and Clay rescue him and take him away from the drug scene into the desert to sober up. Will there be a happy ending for our threesome? If you have read the novel of Less Than Zero, you might be feeling a bit bereft and bemused by the film version. The book contains far stronger material that Hollywood wouldn't touch with a barge pole for a film mainly pitched at young people. The script for the film was written several times and Robert Downey Jnr's character - Julian had to be extensively modified to make him likeable for teenage audiences. The film is a real testament to bygone times in the 1980s. Robert Downey Jnr puts in an incredible performance of Julian which demands that he express virtually every emotion under the sun - particularly desperation and despair. The film looks authentic to its times, mind you it never trivialises or glamourises drug addiction. The decadence of the 1980s is brilliantly played out but if you have read the book you may be feeling bereft of some of the darker stuff that the novel contains. Bret Easton Ellis hated the film at first, but has apparently grown to look at it with sentimentality and nostalgia. This 'The Brat Pack Does Drugs' is certainly an important 1980s zeitgeist of excess and bad behaviour.
My first film watched was Carrie aged 2 on my dad's knee. Educated at The University of St Andrews and Trinity College Dublin. Fan of Arthouse, Exploitation, Horror, Euro Trash, Giallo, New French Extremism. Weaned at the bosom of a Russ Meyer starlet. The bleaker, artier or sleazier the better!
