The excellent ensemble includes John Malkovich as a self-absorbed teacher, and a scene-stealing turn by Jim Broadbent as the world's most self-hating failed artist.

| May 7, 2020

Art School Confidential is as visually uninteresting as it is idea-parched.

| Feb 3, 2020

Art School Confidential starts out as a great movie that eventually devolves into a pretty good one.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 21, 2018

Cynical and raunchy comedy for adults only.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 18, 2010

It's a shame that the film's main impetus turns out to be focused on such a pedestrian and predictable plot.

| Jul 16, 2010

Messy, squalidly funny

| Aug 30, 2009

Director Terry Zwigoff presents a scathing satire of art school student existence but derails the movie, about a talented young artist (well-played by Max Minghella), with an artificial sub-plot about a campus serial killer.

| Original Score: C | Apr 19, 2009

Unfortunately, the tender observations Zwigoff and Clowes specialize in are largely missing from Art School Confidential, which spends its energy on the zany people who'd usually pepper the edges of their films.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jun 8, 2008

A stilted satire of teenage passion and apathy, sex and death and crime...so concerned with aping style that it never bothers to consider its characters as people.

Full Review | Feb 1, 2008

It's too crass to be a plausible satire, and not funny enough to be a dumb comedy.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Dec 7, 2007

It's the work of two misanthropes in an even worse mood than usual.

| Original Score: B | Jul 23, 2007

Simultaneously champions creative desire while calling out the artistic realm's share of pretentious blowhards.

| Original Score: B | Jul 3, 2007

An ingenious satire of the pretentious mindset of the elitist art world from the perspective of a rapidly-disillusioned kid who had no idea what he was getting into.

| Original Score: 4/4 | May 20, 2007

Making fun of art students is like shooting Darwin fish in a barrel.

Full Review | Mar 24, 2007

Suffers from snail-like pacing, an underwhelming central character and the "shooting fish in a barrel" syndrome: The film's targets are all too obvious.

| Mar 1, 2007

Maybe this material isn't entirely fresh, but Zwigoff delivers it with the snap of a quick punch to the face -- which is, in fact, the first image in the film, and a model for innumerable excellent sight gags to follow.

Full Review | Nov 11, 2006

...generally comes off as nothing less than a substantial disappointment.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 13, 2006

The few characters we might have cared for become increasingly shallow, and it all lapses into clichés about the relationship between art and infamy, between personal integrity and selling your soul, and so on.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 1, 2006

Curiously, this relentlessly cynical tone turns out sounding refreshingly original compared to the usual pieties in the genre.

Full Review | Jul 12, 2006

The true merit of the movie is the momentary pleasures of the dialogue and the performances, but the story itself leaves you wanting. So, is it art? Looks like it.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 16, 2006