American Animals

Psychologist Nigel Latta says "teenagers are not right in the head" and this is especially true of teenage boys. American Animals gives you an idea what it would be like if, instead of driving their cars too fast, or drinking too much and doing something foolish, some teenagers you know decide to steal some very valuable books from their university library, sell them on the black market and make millions.It's a  hybrid of a morality tale, a tale of an elaborate uni student prank, and a bank-robbery film. 

A dramatic reconstruction of the events performed by actors is interspersed with the real-life perpetrators recounting what happened and the real-life parents recounting how they felt about it.They're well-presented and articulate and still relatively young (early thirties) and so the story has a kind of gruesome fascination - the archetypal American student goes bad. They did succeed in stealing the books but were later apprehended and served prison sentences as a reuslt. They are universally penitent and I guess the film is to show you that not all crime is committed by hardened criminals and people from under-privileged backgrounds - sometimes it's committed by misguided ordinary people who crave excitement, who have doubts while they're doing it and planning it and feel almost instantaneous regret.

At times American Animals has the feel of a movie that you'd be shown at high school to put you off committing crime but fortunately the entertainment value is greater than that.

Anne's rating 3/5 Victoria's rating 3/5