Art School Confidential

Art School Confidential, the latest film from the creators of Ghost World and Crumb, does not live up to the standard set by its predecessors.

Where both prior films held at their core an intense love for the artistic misfit, Art School Confidential jettisons such fierce attachments for a level of parody not far above that of a standard teen flic like PCU.

Its depiction of art school seems out of date, like it was set in the 1980s, and it repeats the oldest anti-artist cliche in the book, when it presents us with a (spoiler alert) undercover cop who just happens to become the art star of the campus with his naive paintings of cars and sports heroes.

John Waters did a better job in Pecker of satirizing the trend-crazed New York art world. Come to think of it, his current show of his own artworks at Marianne Boesky Gallery goes Art School Confidential one better, entering the artworld itself with Waters' signature brand of contemptuous affection, for example a dark curtain that looks like its leading into a video room, but which pulls back to reveal a wall painted black hitting you in the nose.