Review: American Animals

 

Four young men (Barry Keoghan, Evan Peters, Jared Abrahamson, and Blake Jenner) plan a and attempt to carry out a robbery at the Transylvania University’s library, which houses several valuable rare books. Ann Dowd plays the librarian, whilst Udo Kier plays a European man one of the four would-be robbers supposedly met in Europe to act as a ‘fence’ for the stolen property. Documentary interviews with the real-life participants are interspersed with the fictionalised re-enactment of the incident.

 

Just because you can do something a certain way, doesn’t mean it’s the best way or something you should even do in the first place. So it is with this 2018 real-life heist film made simultaneously as fictional recreation with known actors and as a talking heads documentary by writer-director Bart Layton. Layton is a documentary filmmaker (His “The Imposter” is absolutely fascinating stuff that’ll drive you mad) and this story could’ve easily worked as either documentary or in fictionalised/cinematic narrative form. However, since Mr. Layton is too clever by half, we get the best of neither combined as one distracting and distancing ambitious failure. The idea might’ve been admirable in theory, but Layton shows us 115 minutes of why it doesn’t work in practice. Man this movie pissed me off something hard. I love true crime documentaries, I love a good heist movie (rare as they are). But this strange hybrid? Nope, I didn’t get much out of it. Just a whole lotta awkwardness.

 

In addition to being distracting and wannabe hip, by showing us the real-life characters throughout the film with their fictional counterparts, it shows up the fact that these actors mostly aren’t very good likenesses either externally or even internally for these guys. Thus you’re never able to fully get into the film, because the illusion is broken from moment one. If this were purely a cinematic, non-documentary format version of the film, even if we were shown the real-life guys at the end (or if I had researched things afterwards), the lack of similarity would be a moot point, really. The way it’s done, it’s a constant and irritating reminder, especially in the ill-advised fleeting moments where real-life people and their actor counterparts interact. That was a massive mistake, too clever by half as I said at the outset (Also a mistake? Scenes of the boys watching heist movies to prepare. Even if that really happened, it’s not helpful here, it seems too Tarantino-esque to convince as real). And that’s a shame, because this is actually an interesting, crazy story that would’ve made for a fascinating documentary. These guys were smart enough that they didn’t have to do this. They still could’ve made something for themselves if they just had a bit of work ethic in them. Unfortunately, they were all lazy cowards who tried to cheat their way to financial reward performing one of the most idiotic robberies in criminal history. That’s if they even knew why they were doing it in the first place. The real-life librarian wonders this very thing aloud, and there might be some truth to it, though Warren Lipka was definitely doing it to get out of working hard. The rest? Who really knows, though whatever motivated them it’s sad and pathetic.

 

The performances by the actors meanwhile, are very solid if one is able to completely ignore the resemblance to reality, especially lead actors Evan Peters and Barry Keoghan. However, the only one of the four central performances that convinces as the character they actually play – a character as I said, we see in documentary form throughout – is that of Jared Abrahamson. He’s the best in the cast for sure. Keoghan is absolutely nothing like his real-life counterpart in any way, shape or form. Spencer in the documentary segments seems more like a handsome jock-type (despite actually being an arty type of guy), whereas hangdog-looking Keoghan looks…well, almost the opposite of that. Although he gives an entertaining and perfectly douche-y performance, Evan Peters doesn’t look a thing like the real-life Warren Lipka (nor someone allegedly on an ‘athletic’ scholarship for that matter). Lipka, by the way, comes across worse himself than Peters portrays him, actually. You want to smack his smug face, as it’s clear the wannabe Hollywood guy has little to no shame whatsoever. Blake Jenner has no problems convincing as a jock, but again the real-life guy he’s playing looks far more like Dax Shepard. Objectively it’s the best performance he’s given to date, but that’s only if you remove all knowledge of the guy he’s supposed to be playing, and since the guy he’s playing is also in the film, I couldn’t really do that. His is an interesting character though, because jock Chas Allen seems to have been the only one smart enough to know this was a stupid idea doomed to fail. Unfortunately he’s still an idiot because he still went along with it.

 

It's all well and good to try something different. However, I’m not in the habit of lauding a film purely for originality or ambition. It actually needs to work and for me this interesting, but fatally flawed hybrid film just doesn’t work. It’s never dull, but due to its distracting and counterproductive style, it actually doesn’t pull you in as much as you’d like. I wanted a story, Layton has given me a film school experiment and a failed one at that. Still, it’s a talking point of a film, I’ll give it that.

 

Rating: C+