Affluenza
In 2014, Ethan Crouch, a teenager was put on probation and ordered to undergo treatment at a rehab center for driving drunk and killing four people. He didn’t serve any jail time. A defense hired psychologist reportedly claimed that Crouch suffered from something called “Affluenza,” where poor little rich kids just have to run wild because their parents haven’t set any limits.
The judge said the “Affluenza Defense” had no bearing on her decision but it still worried a lot of people about what kind of precedent it could set, like the “Twinkie defense” did. That might actually make for a somewhat interesting movie story! Too bad that’s not what Kevin Asch is trying to tell with his second film, “Affluenza.” This movie which tepidly attempts to portray such an affliction against the backdrop of the 2008 economic crash and President Obama’s election thinks it’s deep when really it’s just trite. It doesn’t illuminate anything.
The problem worsens with regard to its story particulars’ clear nod to “The Great Gatsby.” “Affluenza” suffers relentlessly by comparison. Fisher Miller (Ben Rosenfield) takes the Nick Carraway role as a teenager from Ithaca who spends the summer with his uncle Phil (Steve Guttenberg), a rich stockbroker in Great Neck, Long Island.
Fisher is trying to get into art school as a photographer; he enters this world of lackadaisical teenage corruption and boredom but finds easy entry into that world by dealing drugs. Phil is married to Bunny (Samantha Mathis), they have a teenage daughter named Kate (Nicola Peltz), who spends most of her days either sunning by the pool or shopping: Women in this world are beautiful useless baubles supported by Wall Street money making men.
Fisher makes friends with Dylan (Gregg Sulkin), a rich boy who acts as Jay Gatsby does in tennis clothes and sunglasses, but if James Spader from “Pretty in Pink” had never moved on. He also has a wealthy father who won’t pay him mind. Dylan is head over heels for Kate and implores Fisher to help him “win her heart,” and then he stands under Kate’s window yelling her name in anguish like Stanley Kowalski until he decides that maybe she isn’t home.
These characters don’t make sense; perhaps that’s the point, but Antonio Macia’s screenplay never digs below the surface of these people or their circumstances. It’s facile, condescending. People just stand around and say who they are. When we’re introduced to Uncle Phil for the first time, he tells his nephew: “Art school la la la, you should go to business school.” One hot-shot dude on the golf course happens to be overheard saying, “Let’s cruise the town in my new Aston Martin and check out the tail.”
Fisher is supposed to be an innocent abroad in a collapsing world of sophistication; everyone watches Obama campaign speeches on TV without any visible lack of interest. They only seem dimly aware of any worldwide financial calamities until it’s too late (and even then). Only Steve Guttenberg seems to know there might be some real stakes here; he plays one of Fisher’s uncles whose confrontation with Mathis near the end of the movie is so brutal and violent yet undercut by sheer terror that their privileged lives could now be over that you want more like it. But it’s not enough.
The young cast just feel lost, clueless about how deeply this story can cut or what these words mean when said aloud. They can’t seem to fulfill their duties under this script with any sense of coherence or urgency; they’re just saying the words. Dylan could be a fascinating character a broken, shallow kid who’s never had to work at having a personality or creating anything for himself but he remains more of an insipid caricature.
Some scenes feel filmed from slightly too far away some of them crucial ones that take place in close quarters and that distance has the effect of muting whatever energy might exist between the actors because it’s all happening out there, somewhere.
Fisher is supposed to come from more modest means than these people, but he’s been around enough entitlement that at one point he can only muster, “I’m gonna have to get a part-time job at some point,” like it’s the most revolutionary idea. Macia also gives him terrible lines such as: “What’s the point of making all that money if you can’t connect to the people that you love?”
After hearing words like those, one yearns for Gatsby’s green light across the bay.
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