Less Than Zero

I decided to watch this film because it has been on my Netflix list for a while and it was only available until March 1st, so I figured I might as well get it over with.

A few years ago, I read the book it is very loosely based upon. I knew the movie is a very watered down version, which is why I hesitated to watch, but I enjoyed it. Perhaps because it has been so long since I read the book, I couldn’t accurately compare the two, or perhaps because going into it I expected to be disappointed, so my expectations were low. I also knew it was loosely based on the book, so perhaps that helped me judge it as its own entity.

Long story short, the book and film are about a guy who comes home for the holidays from college and his disillusionment with that world… and the world in general. I stumbled upon this book, as I knew it was the same author as American Psycho and Rules of Attraction. That same day, I also bought another book, I can’t remember the name of it and am too lazy to get out of bed and get it, but it was a memoir that gave me a similar vibe. Both books included a guy addicted to drugs and selling his body. (I got up and got the book, it is called Assuming the Position.)

I bought three books that day, Less Than Zero, Assuming the Position and The Side of Paradise and they all had a disillusionment about the world that I also felt that summer I read them.

In the film, Clay is your moral compass. It makes sense, as in a film, you need someone to empathize with, ideally the protagonist, as you become that person, in a sense, for the duration of the film. In the book, he is more or less as bad as Blair and Julius. All they do is party, drink, have sex (most characters are bisexual), and do drugs. It’s interesting because I vividly remember reading parts of the book and seeing them as scenes in Nowhere, a film by Gregg Araki that I love that has a similar tone, only Less Than Zero was written almost ten years earlier.

Anyway, from what I read, the book had a difficult time being translated to film, if you read the book, you’d understand why. It is a really bleak look at what it is like to have more money than one should have, to be young and hot and have nothing to do and nothing to look forward to.

I loved Robert Downey Jr’s performance. From what I’ve read, the general consensus is he is the best part of the film.

I’ve always had a fondness for the 80s, maybe because I was born at the end of the decade, so all I know is the glamorous version from TV and movies. I sometimes wonder how my life would have been had I been a teenage in the 80s or 90s. And now I have an urge to re-read the book.