REVIEW: Crazy Eyes Traces the Travails of a Rich, Self-Absorbed, Self-Pitying Angeleno. Do We Care?

The rich, F. Scott Fitzgerald famously (and much overabusedly) wrote, "are different from you and me," and Crazy Eyes tests just how much an audience will be able to care about their problems despite this fact. Wealth isn't the explicit topic of the film, but it colors everything about it, from the swank house in the hills in which Zach (Lukas Haas) lives to the women who trail after him with dollar signs in their eyes to the way that he seems to have nothing to fill his time with except alcohol. The privilege isn't the problem so much as how it has shaped our protagonist — a self-absorbed, self-pitying Los Angeles asshole who happens to be in a self-destructive phase. The motivating factor of the film is Zach's pursuit of something, for once, he isn't easily able to have — Rebecca (Madeline Zima), to whom he's given the nickname "Crazy Eyes," a girl who'll drink herself into oblivion at his side but who won't sleep with him.
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