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Avg. Critic Score: 72 out of 100 Generally favorable reviews Metascore® based on all critic reviews
Information for Parents:
17 not for kids
Read Common Sense Media review

Critic scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more favorable reviews.

  • 100
    Entertainment Weekly | Lisa Schwarzbaum

    Gets weirder and meaner and darker and sadder as it progresses, which is amazing since it simultaneously remains funny and horrifying right up to the end. Read full review

  • 90
    Washington Post | Michael O'Sullivan

    Wickedly funny, jarringly transgressive, obdurately unpigeonholeable and startlingly moving. Read full review

  • 90
    Washington Post | Stephen Hunter

    A dead-on sense of how rich kids live and talk today, a sense of the melancholy of a dysfunctional family, and some great dark laughs. Read full review

  • 88
    Boston Globe | Ty Burr

    Across the board, the performances testify, often hilariously, to the pain these characters feel and inflict but are incapable of expressing. Read full review

  • 88
    Chicago Sun-Times | Roger Ebert

    An inspired example of the story in which the adolescent hero discovers that the world sucks, people are phonies, and sex is a consolation. Because the genre is well established, what makes the movie fresh is smart writing, skewed characters, and the title performance by Kieran Culkin. Read full review

  • 80
    The New York Times | Stephen Holden

    Although Igby has its share of glitches and tonal inconsistencies, it packs an emotional wallop similar to that of another cultural golden oldie as beloved in its way as "The Catcher in the Rye": "The Graduate." Read full review

  • 80
    Variety |

    Young Kieran Culkin holds his own against a stellar ensemble in Igby Goes Down, a family comedy so dark it turns "The Royal Tennebaums" into latter-day Bradys. Read full review

  • 50
    Wall Street Journal | Joe Morgenstern

    Igby has his own prickly charisma and bleak humor; he's a character you'd like very much to embrace. But he's surrounded by insufferable fools in the airless Manhattan universe of a film that's as offputtingly precocious as its preppy hero. Read full review

  • 30
    Los Angeles Times | Kenneth Turan

    Writer-director Steers has chosen to overload "Igby" with phony archness and forced black humor, making it not the place to look for satisfying acting. Read full review

  • 25
    San Francisco Chronicle | Mick LaSalle

    Mean-spirited and not remotely clever, though it strives for archness at every turn. Read full review

View more reviews for Igby Goes Down on Metacritic

Information for Parents
Common Sense Media says not for kids Dark, depressing story that's for adults only.
What Parents Need to Know Parents need to know that they should think twice about letting young teens watch this film. The hero suffers much emotional and physical abuse at the hands of authority figures. The film features teens and adults abusing alcohol, as well as illegal and prescription drugs. It also includes semi-graphic scenes of teenage sex and extramarital affairs. The characters use profane language freely. The film starts and ends with the assisted suicide of a character.
  • Families can talk about the parent-child relationship in their own family unit. How do you match up against Igby's parents? Does your child identify with Igby? They may also want to use this opportunity to talk to their kids about drugs and feelings of isolation.
The good stuff
  • message true0 Positive messages: This film is almost wholly lacking redeemable characters. Everyone lies, cheats, disappoints, and abuses substances. Care/concern for others is wholly linked to a greater concern for oneself.
What to watch for
  • violence false3 Violence: Physical and mental abuse suffered by the main character at the hands of various sources (parents, brother, teachers, therapists), assisted suicide.
  • sex false5 Sex: Extramarital affairs, teenage sex, some mild nudity.
  • language false5 Language: Much cursing by many of the characters, especially by the teenage hero.
  • consumerism false0 Consumerism: Not an issue
  • drugsalcoholtobacco false5 Drinking, drugs and smoking: The film includes pill popping, drinking, and pot smoking on the part of the main character, his friends, and his family. Substances are both the source and solution for problems. Characters show pride in wrapping the perfect joint. A main character suffers a heroin overdose, and the hero is paid to deliver drugs.
An independent nonprofit dedicated to providing families the information they need to help kids thrive in a world of media and technology. © Common Sense Media Inc. 2010. All rights reserved.

Igby Goes Down Movie Ratings + Reviews

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So-so 217 fan reviews

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