Party Monster (2003)
It's hard to dislike a movie where
adorable MacCauly Culkin, now all grown up but of
legal age and as boyishly adorable as ever, is shown
almost continuously in various stages of undress.
That's worth the eight bucks to get in right there.
And, Thank You Jesus! You even get to see his butt
a couple times. Lordy!
The fact that he plays a complete
homo, a screaming queen with such a deplorable sense
of detached irony that is has for all intents and
purposes become free-floating, that he plays a disgusting
drug addict and an unapologetic killer is almost forgivable.
I mean, did I mention, he shows his ass!
Culkin is the main reason anyone
who is anyone in the world of all that glitters wants
to see "Party Monster. And let me tell you darlings,
he is fabulous. Culkin is the quintessential cutie
gay boi twink. He's adorable. His smirkingly delightful
upper lip and his cute, neatly shorn haircut means
as much as his acting does here.
But, dearies, I cannot negate his
thespian prowess. Culkin is perfection here playing
a driveling queen. He's simply scrumptious. We adore
him and forgive him his sins because he is so cute,
cute, cute! He's a walking, breathing, talking nelly
dreamboat!
Culkin's main catty competition
here (in character and out - meow!) is Seth Green
whose acting is even better! Green, by now a household
word because of his appearances in the "Austin Powers"
franchise, never once belies his character. While
we are continuously aware that it is the cutie from
"Home Alone" up there on screen (the one for whom
we boys have waited eons to reach the age of consent),
we forget it is Green playing the opposing role. Green
escapes caricature and hamminess (something Culkin
can not do) and becomes a real character. He's as
delish as one could imagine because he, unlike his
fantasy-induced counterpart, is real, real, real.
"Party Monster" really is, as a
film, a mess. The film begins on the wrong foot with
Green and Culkin, as their overtly flippant characters
here, arguing over whose movie this will be. It's
a typical and tired device and one that only serves
to introduce us to the ironic detachment the film
will continually foist upon us. By making the characters
so catty, snooty and heartless, the scripters and
filmmakers here (Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey)
gives us virtually no one to care about. Their film
exists simply to show just how flippant and inhumane
gay men, especially young ones, can be. These guys
come across as G-Leopold and Loeb Dogg Deluxe, not
killing simply for the thrill of it but killing but
rather because, at the very least, it would something
that would make a fabulous story. It's so droll and
so detached as to become boring. We could care less.
Also, I've always heard that Michael
Alig, Culkin's character, admitted (make that bragged)
on a TV talk show that he killed a drug dealer and
this is how he got caught. Nothing like that happens
in this film. The end of the piece is so rapid and
so incomplete that we never understand how it gets
to this place. All of a sudden, Culkin is in jail
and Green has a book being published. What the fuck
happened between the murder and this epilogue to the
story? We don't find out here.
When all is said and done, "Party
Monster" is much more interested in preening up Culkin
and Green in fabulous costumes and letting them look
sexy, letting them get half- undressed and letting
them be gayer than gay than in telling a comprehensible
story. It allows them to queen it up well beyond what
might pass for reality into the land of the absurd.
This is a film about novelty and the novelty here
is that of seeing Culkin, Green, and "That 70's Show's"
Wilmer Valderrama play it gay and Marilyn Manson play
a drag queen/ All this fabulous glitz far outweighs
anything that the story, themes or ideas of the film
might hope to convey. To paraphrase the famous quote,
"There's no 'there' here."
Like "Queer Eye for the Straight
Guy," this film is all style and no substance. But
hey, at least you get to see Culkin's cute little
butt. One more gay man's fantasy realized. To bad
the film is so wimpy and so without balls that it
doesn't allow him a single male/male kiss or intimate
moment. That would be too gay! Just think of what
Keiran and Rory would say? As it is, Mac insists on
denying that he is gay on every single interview he
does for this movie. I'm sure that just makes it hotter
for the next producer or director who gets to suck
him off so he can have a role in their film.
Mac, straight. Puh-leeze, girlfriend.
He's not that good of an actor.
Notes:
Also with Dylan McDermott, Natasha
Lyonne, Chloe Sevigny (who has absolutely nothing
to do here), Wilson Cruz, Mia Kirschner and John Stamos.
Bailey and Barbato first covered
this story with a documentary of the same name in
1998.
Mac supposedly met with the real
Alig in prison.
The film premiered at Sundance 2003.
Viewed at a press sneak at the Dobie
in October 2003 where the film was shown on digital
video.
