Post Description

In Beverly Hills, you can have anything your heart desires.
You just can't have it the way it used to be. Clay, an
eighteen-year-old freshman, comes back from his first term at
a college in New Hampshire to spend his Christmas vacation
with his broken-up wealthy family in Los Angeles. His former
girlfriend, Blair, is now involved with his ex-best-friend,
Julian. She warns Clay that Julian needs help: he is using a
lot of cocaine and has huge debts. What follows is a look at
the youth culture of wealthy post adolescents in Beverly Hills
with a strong anti-drug message. Apart from the setting and
the names, the film has very little to do with Bret Easton
Ellis's book by the same title on which it was based.

Never has a title more aptly fit its film, but the film is of
interest because Robert Downey, Jr. goes down on a guy (who's
listed in the cast as "Naked Guy"). A creative void by all
concerned has made this limp attempt to be the Easy Rider of
the '80s alienated teen pic nothing more than a sad curiosity
piece. Purging the ennui, drug taking and bisexuality of the
novel for cheap moralistic posturing, the film is almost an
antithesis of the Bret Easton Ellis best-seller. Downey is the
only cast member with an active pulse while McCarthy and Gertz
listlessly cruise the highways of L.A. as zombies in search of
motivation, direction and characterization. Slimy drug dealer
Rip (James Spader) pimps boyish, troubled and straight teen
Julian (Downey) to his male clients. It seems Julian gives
good head, or at least that's what graffiti scrawled on the
shrewish and vacuous zombie that is Jami Gertz's wall says.
The always-engaging Downey's touching, realistic and perhaps
too-close-to-home performance as the "gay-for-pay" junkie is
wasted in this otherwise awful film.

Thx Devlin