10 Sarcastic Movie Pricks You Can't Help But Love
9. Patrick Bateman - American Psycho
Paul Allen: Is that a rain coat? Patrick Bateman? Yes it is!
There are some eternal questions hanging over American Pyscho; did Bateman kill those people? Was he just a fantasy-regression of the even more boring Marcus Halberstram? Can we believe a word he says? Is Bret Easton Ellis really going to write a sequel?
But one thing is clear; Patrick Bateman is just hilarious. In between his soliloquizing bouts about the best restaurants, the best tailors, the best business cards and the best cocaine, he provides consummate put-downs to his friends. Bateman is, in fact, the deep sarcastic metaphor of New York's interchangeable, ego-centric, yuppie business class.
Like your protagonist to keep up his sense of humour as he proceeds through the heros journey? Well, following the brutal murder of Paul Allen, Bateman enters the deceased Allen's apartment and experiences; A moment of sheer panic when I realizes that Paul's apartment overlooks the park and is obviously more expensive than mine Bateman's narration is a tour de force of off-kilter, sarcastic flow leading to an ocean of observational manias.
When confronted with a superior off-white business card his interior monologue exclaims "Oh my God, it even has a watermark!" Bateman's horror-comedy humour is eternal. His attention to minutiae is obsessive, there is an underlying threat which underscores his words and his solitudinous perspective sometimes makes for great insights.
Remember these excerpts? "Not quite blonde, are we? More of a dirty blonde. Well, for one thing, I think he was probably a closet homosexual who did a lot of cocaine. That whole Yale thing."