Igby (Kieran Culkin) comes from a severely dysfunctional New York City family. His father, Jason (Bill Pullman), is in a mental institution after spending many years fighting depression and schizophrenia. Out of all the members of his family, Igby feels closest to him. His authoritarian mother Mimi (Susan Sarandon) rules their household with an iron fist and withering criticism. Brother Ollie (Ryan Phillippe) is an overachiever who is in college and shows every sign of being as cold-hearted and self-centered as his mother.
Mimi is severely disappointed when Igby flunks out of a prep school. Without batting a beautiful eyelash, she sends him off to a New Jersey military academy where she hopes he'll learn some discipline. Instead Igby becomes more adept than ever in finding ways to break rules and snub the establishment.
During a break from school, Igby's very rich and powerful godfather, D. H. (Jeff Goldblum), offers him a chance to work on a SoHo loft he's having renovated. This wheeler-dealer tells him that all relationships in life have contracts. D. H. expects him to tow the line and measure up. Of course, Igby has little respect for him when he realizes that, while his wife takes care of their place in the Hamptons, he's having an affair with Rachel (Amanda Peet). She lets Igby crash in the loft, and he learns that she has a heroin addiction being fed by Russel (Jared Harris), a drug dealer who fancies himself as a conceptual artist.
Igby just can't get any respect anywhere. That is until he meets and falls in love with Sookie Sapperstein (Claire Danes), a laid-back drop-out from Bennington. They share a jaded view of the world as filled with far too many frauds trying too hard to impress everyone with what they've achieved. She listens to Igby's complaints and senses his loneliness. But once his suave and seductive brother Ollie realizes they are friends, he puts the moves on her and doesn't encounter any resistance.
Writer and director Burr Steers has drawn out a fine and sturdy performance from Kieran Culkin, who played another convincing outsider and troublemaker in The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys. This sassy and always engaging coming-of-age drama reveals the manifold ways unmanageable kids can mine pure gold out of their accumulation of sad and sometimes harrowing situations. For instance, the rigorous defense mechanisms that Igby has come up with to protect himself from harm actually make him quite a sensitive observer of human nature. On his second meeting with Sookie, he's able to discern that she's probably a vegetarian just by the way she rolls a joint. And his scathing evaluation of his godfather's hypocrisy is right on the money.
All in all, Igby could be seen as a spruced-up version of J. D. Salinger's archetypal screw-up Holden Caulfield. Igby Goes Down is a lark especially for all those who enjoy cheering for losers who maintain their own special weirdness as woes rain down upon them.
The DVD edition includes an audio commentary with star Kieran Culkin and director Burr Steers, a featurette called "In Search of Igby," and a number of deleted scenes.
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