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154 reviews in total

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47 out of 54 people found the following review useful:
Want to take a strange trip?, 21 March 2005

Author: Mr_Vai from Eden

The old saying is "truth is stranger than fiction," and you know what, it's true. In "Party Monster" we are taken on a very trippy and true little journey that allows us to see first-hand, the crazy club life of New York City in the 1980s. In particular, we get an up-close and personal biography of the "club kids." The "club kids" were a group of young party monsters that were actually paid by club owners to show up at their clubs. Mind you, these kids did not do any kind of performing at all, they simply showed up. However, when you see their outrageous costumes and attire, you see why people had their eye out for them. These kids were bizarre and odd and stoned and well, weird. Livng lives that were so out of balance, tragedy was inevitable. Green and Culkin portray the two most prominent members of this group and they are both good. However, it is Culkin that really steals the movie, breaking away from his stereotypical characters of the past and playing somebody that very few actors would be brave enough to take on. The reason I gave this movie 10 stars, is the look and sound. This movie is like watching an acid flashback from the 1980s. I mean, you are there, in the room with them as they strut in and snort up. The music is 1980s, the attitude is 1980s, it is hard to describe. Much of the film is dream-like. Moreover, Culkin is mesmerizing as a character too odd for words. No, the story and acting are not Oscar-worthy, but the look of the film, the feel of the film, wow! I predict that this film will become more popular as the years go by. It has the qualities of all those great midnight movies of the 1980s. I really recommend it for people craving something different and historical (in a weird sense).

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31 out of 40 people found the following review useful:
"Saved" by the pill...., 2 July 2005

Author: ptb-8 from Australia

A famous quote by Pauline Kael about Greta Garbo was that "she was the complete reason to see a film". Well, let me tell ya, I will agree, astonishing even myself, that Maculay Culkin fits this description about PARTY MONSTER. Off screen for 9 years and making two excellent eye-popping returns (the sly wry and hilarious SAVED is the other) 23 year old Culkin is nothing more than front and center startling and compelling in this very clever club culture expose of the very real and very cruel pill bunny Michael Alig. Released clumsily on one print in Australia and off screen in 2 weeks, this film deserved smart marketing and even a reissue before DVD dumping because it has a potentially huge audience and major industry credit as a very difficult genre to re create successfully. I think PARTY MONSTER is a complete success in its serious efforts to capture the dance party scene of the 90s and the glittering bowel of its dark side. The performance by Seth Green is equally disturbingly funny, complete with effete rantings and flummoxed quips that leave the viewer smiling in admiration at his genuine talent. The look of PARTY MONSTER is almost as if Larry Cark re made "Studio 54" and got Bob Mackie to create the costumes. The art direction and costume design is especially perfect and adds hilariously to what is, I believe one of the most clever and nasty black comedies to emerge from the USA this century. Marilyn Manson as gigantic dopey drag queen Christina (geddit) is especially hilarious and shocking. If you have seen the equally brave and hilariously tragic HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH and also read Roger Ebert's superbly written and accurate review of PARTY MONSTER then you will be well equipped to deliciously slurp up every frame of this - literally - sensational disco bloodbath. To say that the astonishing and entertaining performances of Culkin and Green are fearless is the understatement of the century. 20th or 21st! PARTY MONSTER is a major achievement.

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25 out of 29 people found the following review useful:
Underrated (***), 23 October 2003

Author: Jason Alley (samurai1978@aol.com) from Sacramento

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

In choosing "Party Monster" as his first film in 9 years, Macauley Culkin follows a traditional pattern. He quickly became America's favorite cute little kid in the first 2 "Home Alone" movies, but then began to fade in popularity after starring in one mediocre kid flick after another. So he went into hibernation, grew up, and now returns, going for acting credibility in a tough indie movie this time rather than mainstream popularity. Sure, it's calculated, but I'd rather see him as a narcissistic, gay killer in "Party Monster" than in another movie like "Getting Even With Dad", so I'm not complaining.

Culkin plays the real-life character of Michael Alig, a gay kid from the Midwest who moved to New York in the 1980's. He met James St. James (Seth Green), a ridiculously flamboyant socialite who is always dressed in bizarre costumes. There is a great scene in a doughnut shop early on where James demonstrates to Alig how to work a club, and this is Alig's introduction to that culture.

Alig, shy at first but extremely ambitious, gets a job promoting parties at the Limelight and for a short time there, becomes a genuine subculture "celebrity". Him and the "Club Kids" even appeared on talk shows because of their elaborate costumes and crazy lifestyle.

Eventually, his life spiraled out of control because of drug addiction and his own outrageous self-absorption, culminating in the murder of his drug dealer, Angel (Wilson Cruz), by hammer and injections of Drano. He let the body lay in his apartment for several days, before finally dismembering it and throwing it in the river.

Culkin is great as Michael Alig. It's hard to imagine how he makes a character who is so shallow and self-involved likable, but Culkin does it. Even in the end, after Alig has committed murder, we still don't completely hate him.

It's Seth Green, though, who absolutely steals the movie. As James St. James, the only character present who seems to have a real life force and a human heart beating under all that glitter, his performance is funny, touching, and surprising. It's also amazing how Green utterly transforms his voice and stature. He still LOOKS every bit like Seth Green, but he becomes almost unrecognizable because of his complete transformation into this larger-than-life character.

"Party Monster", on such a low budget, is rather sloppily made and it goes on for too long, but on the whole it's a good movie. One that shifts gears from entertaining to disturbing with comfort and ease. And in Seth Green's performance, it has one of the most interesting characters of the year.

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20 out of 23 people found the following review useful:
So bad, it's good - a guilty pleasure, if not quite as hedonistic as the lives of the club kids themselves, 2 January 2005

Author: Colette Corr from Melbourne, Australia

Party Monster is based on the true story of 80s club kid and promoter, Michael Alig, infamous for his bizarre New York parties and, later, for the brutal murder of a drug dealer.

It's adapted from Alig's friend James St James' book Disco Bloodbath by filmmakers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, whose earlier documentary about Alig actually inspired St James to write the book. After a nine-year absence, Macauley Culkin returns to film as cherubic bisexual Alig, who persuades James St James (a camp Seth Green) to teach him the art of infamy.

Famous for doing nothing long before reality TV, Alig becomes a manufacturer of celebrity and a promoter, serving up some wild parties, including a Halloween bloodbath, truck rave and kinky hospital party. The costumes, by Richie Rich and Michael Wilkinson, are spectacular and capture the excesses of the era. These kids affix fake spiders and cobwebs to their faces, wrap themselves in blood-soaked bandages,wear full body costumes and never look less than fabulous.

Considering the low budget and appalling production values, the high profile supporting cast is a surprise. Dylan McDermot plays Galien, club owner and Alig's mentor, with Mia Kirshner as his wife, Chloe Sevigny as Alig's girlfriend, plus Natasha Lyonne, Marilyn Manson and John Stamos. Wilson Cruz is enigmatic as wannabe and drug dealer Angel, and Wilmer Valderra is suitably objectified as Alig's beloved beefcake, DJ Keoki.

Party Monster suffers from uneven performances and poor direction but despite this, it's fascinating. It captures the disposability of party drug culture convincingly and will most likely become a cult classic. ***/***** stars.

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28 out of 39 people found the following review useful:
Club kids on the primrose path: The movie that '54" should have been, 17 June 2004

Author: bmacv from Western New York

'I'm the lowest kind of celebrity, a playwright's wife,' Celeste Holm tells Anne Baxter in All About Eve. Fifty-plus years later, she might still make the snapshot page in Vanity Fair (once), but new kinds of celebrity have clambered up to push her further down the pecking order. There are the Elvis impersonators and celebrity look-alikes. There are the trash-talking competitors on the reality shows. And there are the Club Kids, urban counterparts to the beach bums of a generation or two ago who sought nothing more out of life than an Endless Summer. What the Club Kids want is an Endless Party, where they can flame out in a drug-enhanced limelight.

The Limelight was a fixture among New York City's young downtown hedonists in the last decades of the last century. It's the center of a very small universe for James St. James (Seth Green), a budding queen from across the Hudson who, equipped with little else than a trust fund and received notions of imperious glamor, sets out to be the social arbiter of the club scene. His misfortune (and ultimately opportunity) is meeting up with hick Michael Alig (Macaulay Culkin), just off the Big Dog from one of the square states, who will prove to be St. James' very own Eve Harrington.

Imagine Bob Hope and Bing Crosby gone gay, their bitchy dynamics holding these buddies together as they prance and stumble down the Rave Road. They live in cold-water walk-ups, spending what money they have on costumes and drugs (when they can't cadge them). As a living, they set themselves up as promoters and taste-makers for struggling entrepreneurs like Dylan McDermott, whose Limelight is barely breaking even. They dream up ever more outrageous parties to lure other kids from the bridges and tunnels and tenements once occupied by immigrants but now serving as digs for druggies and rodents. (Marilyn Manson as stoned drag queen Christina serves as 'driver' for one of the events, trying to maneuver a big rig in platform heels.) Along the way there are Alig's discarded or disengaged boyfriends (Wilmer Valderrama) and girlfriends (Chloe Sevigny), sexual preference always taking a back seat first to Ecstasy and K, then to crackpipes and snorted heroin.

Party Monster derives from St. James' memoir Disco Bloodbath – as a result of his plunge into addiction, Alig ends up incarcerated for the murder of his dealer Angel (Wilson Cruz). And as St. James, Green delivers a pitch-perfect performance, blackly funny yet with intimations of the shallow life he knows he leads. It's Culkin's misfortune to have his co-star so expertly steal the movie, but, with his sullen, pouty mouth, his child-star successes well behind him yet not quite filled out enough for adult roles, he's plausible as a callow social-climber who's nothing but surfaces and attitude anyway. (And as his good-time-gal-pal mom, Diana Scarwid is, as always, memorable). Party Monster maintains a deft balance between its faintly horrifying humor and its somber notes. It's a story about kids old beyond their years who, as they proudly proclaim, are utterly superficial, but still not (quite) the 'monsters' they pretend to be. Party Monster – a much more interesting and accomplished piece of work – is the movie that '54" should have been, and maybe even thought it was.

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27 out of 40 people found the following review useful:
Surprisingly Good., 9 January 2005

Author: roswellian-1 from United States

When I started to watch this movie I wasn't at all aware what it was about. I just saw that MaCaulay Culkin and Seth Green were in it and thought, "Cool! Maybe this'll be good." A lot of people say this movie was bad, that it was horribly acted, but I think they just couldn't get past Culkin's shortcomings. I don't believe he was a bad actor, I simply believe he got stuck on the idea of how he had to humanize his character, and that was his ultimate downfall (in the special features he explained this was something he wanted to bring to the character).

Seth Green, as always, is adorable and can completely immerse himself into a character and really bring him to light. Marilyn Manson played Christina wonderfully, if only for a short time. Wilmer Valderrama was terrific as Keoki and it was a disappointment to see he was only in such a little portion of the film.

All in all, this movie was great. It had a great cast and a great script. The movie was meant to poke fun, not to make you think about any hidden meanings or to wonder why they were acting so strange. Club Kids were all about glamour, mocking celebrities, and, in the end, drugs. They didn't want to grow up, and they certainly didn't want to live a normal life.

Culkin had his moments where he pulled Alig off well, and in others, you could tell he was trying to stretch the character into places he wasn't meant to go. And if he was, Culkin certainly wasn't the actor to do it.

All in all, a "fabulous" film. Highly recommended if you're interested in how some of the 80's really played out.

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7 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
Not as good as you'd want it to be, 22 April 2010

Author: EnjoyablePresence from United States

The material here (covered in a similarly named documentary) is fascinating. The 90s New York club kid scene was a distinctive period with many crazy sights and scenes. Unfortunately, this film is poorly made on just about every level.

Most of the acting is not just bad, but some of the worst you'll ever see in a mainstream film. This is exacerbated by poor directing. The dramatic scenes don't feel dramatic (I yawned as one character nearly died). The costumes are very good, about on par with the actual club kids. So the film looks good at least.

Another issue: they changed so much for this movie from the actual story! If you research the actual murder and such after watching this you'll just be confused as to why they made all those arbitrary changes. I certainly wasn't to make a great film. Many people like this film, but I suspect deep down they want to live in the 90s club kid scene, and aren't objectively judging the film for its merits.

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11 out of 15 people found the following review useful:
A well informed movie about drug abuse., 9 October 2005

Author: okami_ito from Berlin, Germany

I often wondered why U.S. American movies involving young people who are into drugs are either pathetic (f.e. Drugstore Cowboy) or even downright ridiculous in their conservative portrayal of the dangers of drug use (f.e. Traffic, The Movie). Party Monster is very different. It's easy to see that the people who made this movie really informed themselves about what they tried to show. By doing this they achieved one of the best movies about adolescence i've seen in a long time. It's has a very sad and tender tone and though some scenes seem a little bit too stagy, the performances of the two leading actors are pure magic. It's pure joy just to watch them and as you got to see a lot of them there is plenty of fun. Nevertheless the movie leaves you with a very intense and ambivalent feeling towards it's characters who were indeed something very special. I even dreamed about this picture after seeing it! Thanks for the strange dream!

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10 out of 14 people found the following review useful:
beautiful, 8 March 2004
Author: foccaciayou (saraarterburn@hotmail.com) from new orleans, la

this film is an amazing work of art and must be viewed as such. if you're looking to understand the storyline, you MUST read the book disco bloodbath (rereleased as party monster) by james st. james. it's also helpful to watch the director's commentary on the dvd with fenton bailey and randy barbato. so much is explained between these two sources that is taken for granted in the film (ie michael and james' sources of incomes, explanations of michael and peter's relationship, and a more logical timeline). the most important thing to realize and keep in mind throughout watching this film is that michael alig was (is?) incredibly insecure but at the same time incredibly loving. the most telling line in the movie is delivered by seth green, when speaking to macaulay culkin after the latter's feigned attempt at suicide: "There's not enough love in the whole wide world to satisfy you." party monster the film is incredibly intelligent, as is the book. the story and its retelling are hysterical and horrifying at the same time. this film acts as both a warning and a touching memoir - a must see for fans of realism and those who enjoy seeing human emotion and drama rather than special effects and airbrushed muscles.

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25 out of 44 people found the following review useful:
Breathtaking - Green steals the film, 8 April 2004
Author: Nina (HippieLizzie) from Staffordshire, England

Living in the UK means you very rarely get to see some amazing films. Having read the book I heard about the film and as you do, immediately ordered it to be shipped over, not expecting to find it anywhere near as good as the book. Boy, was I wrong.

Macaulay Culkin as Alig is annoying and my one pet peeve of the film. He just didn't make Michael real to me. His entire performance seemed to scream "I was a child star, now I'm playing a gay addict! Look at me!". The role was also written for him and I got the impression that because of this he felt he didn't have to act too hard to be brilliant. He never, despite his attempts, gave Alig another level. The accent didn't add anything to the character and by the end I was left wondering why everybody had loved Michael Alig.

Seth Green on the other hand stole the film from right under Culkin's nose. His performance as James St James was one of the best I have ever seen in my life. He transformed himself until you didn't even realise it was the guy from Buffy you were watching. His mannerisms were spot on and really did St James justice. His voice was not as whiny or non descript as Culkin's, it was simply a prop used by him. His character managed to appear human throughout the entire film and his habit of touching his hair at least once a scene was fabulous. Green deserves an award for such an amazingly real, yet flamboyant performance.

The supporting cast were also fantastic and each and every person added to the story. The removal of Mavis from the film did annoy me slightly but after a while you forget she was ever there. The costumes, and behaviour of every single Club Kid in this film were fantastic. You really felt as though you were actually watching this happening. Marilyn Manson as Alig's first Superstar Christina was perfect, adding to a character not mentioned a lot in the book.

All in all an absolutely fabulous film that deserves far far more credit than was given to it. Seth Green really held the film together, showing rare glimpses of humanity amongst all the glitter. Green was perfectly cast and deserves at least some recognition for a fantastic performance. The only downside was Macaulay Culkin, who simply did not shine. He stood back and let the supporting cast, and especially Green turn this into their movie, not his.

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