Affluenza

“Gatsby” meets “Gossip Girl” in this outsider-among-the-wealthy story set, like Fitzgerald’s novel, on Long Island.

The film is dragged down by its awkwardly paradoxical story, which tries too hard to care too little.

Ultimately feels as shallow as the lives of most of its principal characters.

Affluenza thinks it is deep when it is merely trite. It illuminates nothing.

The film is an empty shell, reducing a complex lament to a shallow portrait of wealthy hedonists behaving badly.

A splashy-looking yet depressingly empty exercise that is never more shallow than the times when it tries to go deep.

The movie’s ennui feels like so much posing, and the Bret Easton Ellis-lite characters are monotone. It’s rich in effort, but it all comes to diminishing returns.