“American Animals is nothing if not a movie that arrives at some very simple truths in the hardest way possible,” writes IndieWire’s David Ehrlich. “A slick, well-acted, and intensely self-reflexive docudrama from the director of The Impostor, [Bart] Layton’s first narrative feature (whatever that means) takes a remarkable footnote from our country’s recent history and sticks it inside an infinity mirror, creating a sort of Walmart Kiarostami that works too hard to sell its structure, and not hard enough to justify its subject.”
It’s “based on a gobsmackingly unbelievable true story,” notes Matt Donnelly at TheWrap. “In 2004, a group of college boys conspired to rob a rare books archive at Transylvania University in Kentucky (yup, real college), namely the precious works of John James Audubon who cataloged and painted the birds of North America in the 19th century. In search of a ‘transformative’ experience that would break the monotony of their Southern routines, the men pull off a staggeringly bad plan to obtain the books. It manifests as a harebrained scheme to supposedly fence the materials using an international crime outfit they find through two email addresses and a friend of a friend (all true).”
“Do you reassemble the real-life players for a documentary recounting the events?” asks Kevin Fallon at the Daily Beast. “Or do you dramatize them in a bells-and-whistles, adrenaline-pumping feature? In what may have been the first of director Bart Layton’s fuck-it-all surrender to cinematic excess and a pyro-like burning of the filmmaking rulebook, you can imagine him snickering and raising a devious eyebrow: ‘Why not just do both?’ American Animals is that experiment—part dramatization, part documentary—and a thrilling, surprising one at that.”
And “the results are sensational,” finds Variety’s Guy Lodge. This is “a riveting college-boy crime caper that tiggers along on pure movie-movie adrenalin, before U-turning into a sobering reflection on young male privilege and entitlement. Performed with piss, vinegar and some poignancy by a fractious quartet of bright young things—with the ever-more-intriguing Barry Keoghan first among equals—Layton’s crowd-pleasing Sundance competition entry is tricked out to the max with lithe structural fillips, flashes of cinematic quotation and formal sleight of hand that gradually reveals a pointed thematic purpose.”
“Layton has fun early on with some Bro-shomon elements,” writes Mike D’Angelo, but “American Animals isn't about the subjective nature of memory, nor is it a meditation on fiction vs. reality. It just kinda sprinkles some of those ideas onto a mildly entertaining dumb-heist narrative.”
For Brian Tallerico at RogerEbert.com, “some of the directorial choices, including on-the-nose music cues, get just exhausting long before the film is over. . . . I never quite got a handle on why I was watching it.”
But Screen’s Fionnuala Halligan finds it “genuinely innovative, pleasingly entertaining, and deliciously more than the sum of its parts. . . . It’s rare to see a film which genuinely breaks new ground, which is why the picture should be embraced with glee.”
Talking to Screen’s Louise Tutt, Layton calls American Animals “a coming-of-age, existential movie masquerading as a heist movie.”
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