SummaryWriter/director Neil LaBute once again explores and explodes modern relationships in this contemporary story of love, sex and art set in a college town. (Focus Features)
Directed By:Neil LaBute
Written By:Neil LaBute
The Shape of Things
Metascore
Mixed or Average
59
User score
Mixed or Average
4.5
My Score
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Metascore
Mixed or Average
59
51% Positive
18 Reviews
18 Reviews
37% Mixed
13 Reviews
13 Reviews
11% Negative
4 Reviews
4 Reviews
100
LaBute is coming of age as an artist, and his future looks brighter than I ever would have suspected a year ago. Enfant terrible or not, he's starting to become a substantial figure in American film.
75
In The Shape of Things, love doesn't just hurt: It bites, and bites deep.
75
What starts out as a talky, modern-day re-interpretation of "Pygmalion" (Henry Higgins is explicitly mentioned) turns into something heart-wrenchingly bleak.
63
Strikes me as more of a thesis piece than anything LaBute has put his name to thus far. Its characters don't seem to be people as much as they are stand-ins for ideas.
58
What it isn't is a believable relationship. Yet that may scarcely matter to LaBute, a gifted and corrosive wordsmith who appears intent, by now, on shoving all romantic couplings into the meat grinder of his misanthropic design.
50
Unfortunately, these actors are subject to Mr. LaBute's usual dramatic method, which is to cobble together a preposterous moral outrage and then wave it in front of our faces, asking us to believe that it is a window, or even a mirror.
30
This might be the edgiest film of the year -- if the year were 1982.
User score
Mixed or Average
4.5
40% Positive
4 Ratings
4 Ratings
30% Mixed
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
30% Negative
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
Dec 7, 2012
6
Disturbing and interesting at the same time, it's a brilliant comedy that shows many human interactions from every perspective, not all of them are equally interesting and characterized. The movie sometimes lack stronger performances but a superb Rachel Weisz shadows others weaknesses. I was surprised but the movie flowed smoothly guided by a convincing plot till the sharp and stunning end. I highly recommend the lover of this genre to watch it.
Production Company:
- Mepris Films
- Pretty Pictures
- StudioCanal
- USA Films
- Working Title Films
Release Date:May 9, 2003
Duration:1 h 36 m
Rating:R
Tagline:Seduction Is An Art
Awards
Central Ohio Film Critics Association
• 1 Nomination
