The Shape of Things (2003)

Very impressive in the way that it leaves a lasting impression, which good films should. The details keep returning to me long after seeing it. Obviously the kind of film that deserves a second viewing. Great cast, their ages being immaterial to me. The crafting of the story and the conviction of the actors was what mattered, and what a breath of fresh air to observe such long scenes, one after the other, without any flashy, distracting camera work. Ms Weisz and Mr Labute have created a modern day Femme Fatale - how refreshing! This is the first film I've publicly applauded in a cinema since The Magdalene Sisters. Get out to the cinema and see this now before it hits video.

Fmovies: Neil Labute's shocker is nothing short of breathtaking with amazing performance by Rachel Weisz who is becoming the best actress we have around. The story is intense and the performance is great all around, and it will floor you once you finish seeing it. The biggest praise goes to Rachel Weisz, who single handily makes this movie as great as it is, and she carries this film on her shoulders all the way. Her performance is a tight rope of nerves and guts, and she does it all with style.

If you are looking for an intelligent movie with a great and fearless performance by one of the best actresses of our generation, this is it. If you can't take reality, then go hide under a rock.

Six years after his savage debut ('In The Company Of Men'), Neil LaBute decided to steal from himself and churn out the same formula again. 'The Shape Of Things' is really just 'In The Company Of Men' for women. I won't elaborate further on that point or I'd give too much away, most of which you should be able to guess anyway. Both his freshman film and this one are not without fascinating moments, but at least he came up with an original idea his first time out as a filmmaker. The final 20 minutes of 'The Shape Of Things' won't come as a surprise to those who pay even a little bit of attention to the story. I pretended to be stunned when the plot turn happened just to amuse myself. After all, the movie wasn't amusing me anymore.

LaBute gives only four actors speaking parts. Paul Rudd and Rachel Weisz are the leads, college students Adam & Evelyn. [That's almost Adam & Eve, isn't it? And there's even a fall from innocence after an act of treachery. No Garden Of Eden, though.] When they meet, he's fleshy and shy. She's another in the overwhelmingly long line of female free spirits who show their guy a whole world of fun & sex they never knew existed. Whee! Gretchen Mol and Frederick Weller are the other two actors who get to speak (only four actors get lines in a psychological drama...ooh, ooh, I know, it's 'Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?', right?] and they play Adam's engaged friends. Their relationship with Evelyn is never wonderful and it changes as the movie plays out. They don't like seeing their friend change so much just to please this new girlfriend.

Rudd gradually transforms, physically and emotionally. The title of the film refers to what concerns too many of the superstar-gazers out there, the surface of things or...anyone, anyone?...the shape of things. Our society DOES put form over content far too often, but average-looking guys like me don't need a movie to tell us that a Hollywood-ugly Paul Rudd (who's still quite handsome) must get plastic surgery, contact lenses, and different clothes to get laid. As he gains material "value", he loses his sense of morality. The climax pounds and pounds that point home for those who walked into the picture very late.

I've been harder on the film than I probably should be. The actors do the best they can with such obvious material. This was a stage play first, then LaBute adapted it---just barely---for the screen. It's stagy and overly wordy, with some quaint actorly touches that The Actor's Studio would just love. All the same, some of these devices seem forced. There's not much else here if the characters don't interest you because LaBute is no technical visionary. He takes pictures of people talking. In this case, that got old before the credits rolled.

It's interesting that Weisz flips the bird to the audience during her character's artistic summation because the director himself could have stood in for her and taken care of that gesture himself. This is a man who must stare at the ceiling at night and wonder just how brutal his characters can be. LaBute's lead actress' double fingers say more about what he thinks of his audience than anything else in 'The Shape Of Things'. Now, where's my copy of 'Nurse Betty'? There's a movie of his that won't make me feel like diving head-first into a sponge bath.

The Shape of Things fmovies. This film was absolutely not what I expected it to be. In the first half an hour, I even got a little bored, because it seemed like the story was going nowhere. Fortunately, I got my happy ending - no, not at all a film with a happy ending, just an ending that makes the film precious! It really makes you stare at the black screen, with the cast moving in front, and think about what you've seen over and over again. Of course, the brilliant play of Rachel Weisz cannot be left unmentioned, but I think that the others did a great job as well. "The Shape of things" is a film with actually just four actors and one great idea, and trust me, it is worth seeing. I am just wondering how would I feel the second time I watch it!

Years ago, when I was young and naive about movies, I read a harshly critical review of "The French Connection." The critic's main objection was that the movie deliberately rubbed the viewer's nerves raw in scene after scene, and then when that wasn't enough, applied something like cinematic rubbing alcohol to the abrasions to goad still more extreme reactions. The critic felt bruised and manipulated when the movie was over.

This movie doesn't rub nerves raw and then apply rubbing alcohol; it drills holes straight into the viewer's skull and pours in battery acid. The trouble with this approach is that the viewer is lobotomized almost instantly, unless the viewer is old enough and crusty enough to have seen the kinds of tricks that Hollywood uses to goad us into strong reactions. There's a scene where the anti-protagonist tells the people attending the unveiling of her latest art project that she knows some people will have strongly negative reactions to her work. "Diversity is good," she says in one of the only lines in the movie where her delivery registers just slightly above the robotic, "just don't be apathetic."

That's what the makers of this movie believe in. Love it or hate it, just please please pretty please don't yawn during the movie.

Well, I yawned.

This movie is the cinematic equivalent of every novel Ayn Rand ever wrote, in the sense that its "story" is really a manifesto, and it shows. Sure, if you're young and still intellectually a blank slate, but hungry for ideas, it can provide the starting point for vigorous debates. I suppose. For those of us who don't view the people around us as bugs in a collection, however (probably because we've already had our turns at being treated as a bug in a collection), this movie is just more pseudo-intellectual bile-venting all dressed up as serious, grown-up thinking. Consider such profound observations as, "Cute guys always develop a potty-mouth sooner or later; they think it makes them more adorable." Does this sound like Hegel to you? Or just a cheap cliché?

I wasn't outraged or shocked or horrified or invigorated or captivated or astonished or anything else by this movie, any more than I am by some modern art exhibit that consists of an empty room with flashing lights, or the feces of an artist in a tin, or a severed penis in a jar. No: Just bored. I've seen it before. Five or six years down the road, someone else will come up with essentially the same idea, but they'll have to twist the knife just a bit harder to try to get a reaction from an ever-more jaded audience.

Maybe this time the artist will kill her ersatz boyfriend. In the movie after that, she can cook and eat him. And in the one after that, she'll announce that the hors d'ouevres that her guests are nibbling are none other than the hapless Addam. Each will feature the same huge banner that reads, "Moralists have no place in an art gallery" (remember to make the letters EXTRA BIG like a Wal-Mart banner) and the same pale, Botoxesque, expressionless, emotionless "artiste" that the movie is lauding and skewering at the same time.

Yawn.

Heart wrenching and captivating look and relationships that is Neil Labute best film since his horrifying " In the Company of Men" Rachel Weisz literally hold the movie and the viewer in the palm of her hand with a supercharge performance that will be talked about for years and Paul Rudd does good as well as her object of desire. The movie starts off being one thing and ends up being something completely and terrifyingly different once it was over. This is one viewer who is still blown away by the climax and will probably always remember the lesson that was learned by watching this film. Special Thanks to Neil Labute and Rachel Weisz for making one of the most compelling movies ever made.