Igby Goes Down

REVIEW
Igby (Kieran Culkin) is a sullen, sarcastic and somewhat overwhelmed seventeen-year-old who resents the Upper East Side world of old money into which he was born. With a truly crazed father (Bill Pullman), a distant and peculiar mother (Susan Sarandon) and a young Republican pig for a brother (Ryan Phillippe), Igby decides that the prep school, college, Wall Street track he is on isn't for him.

Happily flunking out of who knows how many prep schools, Igby is sent off to a military academy from which he escapes with a stolen credit card. He hides in his totally wacked out godfather's (Jeff Goldblum) apartment in NYC with his junkie girlfriend (Amanda Peet), gay drug-dealer Russell (Jared Harris) and the terminally bored Sookie Sapperstein (Claire Danes). With an eccentric cast of characters that rivals even a Fellini film and such an appealing lead in Kieran Culkin, Igby is one of the most original coming-of-age films we've seen in some time.