But it struck a chord with other disillusioned art-school vets, so Clowes felt it imperative to flesh out the original. For those of us who adore Clowes' and Zwigoff's work, together and separately, news of their collaboration seemed reason for celebration. Their adaptation of Clowes' graphic novel Ghost World five years ago was smart, sly, and ultimately heartfelt -- it dripped with affection for these two outcast girls wrestling with the emotions, angst, stirrings and pressures that build as bodies bloom and minds expand. But Zwigoff needed little prompting: Clowes' original work had as much guts as heart; it was a comic book that felt more palpable than most documentaries. Then, for Zwigoff, came 2003's Bad Santa, which bore the smudge and grime of old underground comics; it was Little Rascals by way of Zwigoff's old pal and collaborator Robert Crumb, all sexed up and screwed up in a thoroughly debauched and delightful way.
Art School Confidential tries to split the difference between its two predecessors: It's a coming-of-age tale dipped in smut and funk, a story of awakening and enlightenment that just wants to be a dirty joke. And it works for a good while -- probably half of the movie, during which it's a dingy, messy, sophomoric bit of fun without pretensions of being anything more than Animal House for the avant-comics set.
Jerome (Max Minghella) is a goofy, cocky twerp who figures, like all high school outsiders more likely to get punched than laid, that college will change his entire life. He's waiting for the moment when he gets into Strathmore Institute, which has sent Jerome a pamphlet full of pretty-girl promises. He keeps the Strathmore literature in his pocket especially because of its picture of one girl: Audrey (Sophia Myles), she of unattainable movie-starlet beauty. And should Strathmore also teach him how to be a better painter, so much the better . . . but really, getting laid is the first order of business, except that beatnik art chicks and seemingly innocent suburban girls prove no suitable replacement for Audrey. They're all just a different brand of nuts.
Clowes gets right that phenomenon any student will recognize, because it's such a cliché: the teacher who teaches because there is no other viable option left. John Malkovich, as Professor Sandiford (who was painting triangles before anyone, he boasts), beautifully pegs that blank, defeated, don't-give-a-shit stare every instructor gets when he realizes he's forever trapped talking to kids who think they're better than he is (and probably are). "I don't have any great wisdom to impart to you people other than these four magic words," he tells them: "Don't have unrealistic expectations." Further down the has-been food chain is drunken master Jimmy (Jim Broadbent), who's rotting away in his squalid apartment while zoned out on slivovitz.
But just as the movie settles into a nice, nasty-with-a-grin rhythm -- Jerome finds a screw-up buddy in cynical, scared dropout Bardo (Joel David Moore); he meets and befriends Audrey, who introduces him to a sophisticated, grown-up world of art and commerce -- it takes a dreadfully wrong turn toward nothing less than a murder mystery involving a campus serial killer. It's there from the very beginning, but only hinted at -- used as a joke, not the very plot device that hijacks the movie at the halfway point and steers it wildly off course before crashing into a predictable payoff.
Clowes is trying to say something about the value of art, about how only the stupendously undeserving and egregiously hackneyed garner the adoration and fortunes that belong to The Truly Great. But so what? Infamy's always been more valuable than fame; it lasts longer and brings more at auction. Art School Confidential is so much better when it plays like a dirty joke with some heart (like Bad Santa, which only pretended it didn't care) -- when it satirizes and damns and even gives little pecks on the cheek to an experience that made Clowes what he is (or isn't, whatever). But as soon as it tries to be about something -- as soon as it stops entertaining and starts judging -- the grin collapses into a grimace. It all feels so fetid, so familiar, and the outside-the-lines masterpiece turns into one more connect-the-dots commodity.
