Written and directed by Bart Layton

Starring Evan Peters, Barry Keoghan, Blake Jenner, Jared Abrahamson

American Animals plays out like a movie that wants to be a documentary and a real time drama, spliced in with goofy and comedic tones. The switching back and forth between these three works only sometimes, but mostly is too jarring and kept taking me out of the movie. I knew nothing about it walking in, and although I enjoyed a good deal of it, I’m not sure I could quite recommend or defend it.

The film is a real story, and not just “based on” one, as the opening titles point out, and is about the actual heist that took place in 2004 where four college kid friends stole the most valuable books in the world from a university library. Sounds stupid right? That’s because it is.

The four students are Warren (Evan Peters), Spencer (Barry Keoghan), Chas (Blake Jenner), and Eric (Jared Abrahamson). They all know each other but the movie starts with Spencer. He’s an artist, and one day while in that library I mentioned earlier gets to see those extremely rare and expensive books which contain valuable paintings, many of which are animals. Why does he decide he wants to steal it? I dunno, he’s an upper class college kid who just seems bored with the status quo. Maybe it’s because Warren plants the seed of the heist in his head when he tells him about it later, that’s a possibility. No one really knows why they wanted to do it, and if I’m sounding vague about this then welcome to one of the movie’s big problems.

It just doesn’t make for a good story when the motivations of four well off 20 somethings is not really there. I guess, “cause they were bored with life” will be what is taken away from this. I don’t think enough was delved into their lives to warrant us being fully invested. The closest reason I got was from Warren, who is on an athletic scholarship at his college but keeps failing to show up to his games. During a confrontation with his counselor his speech about “disappointments” is one of the better spaces of time in the film, and is as best a motivation for the crime they commit that this movie gives us.

The others don’t make as much sense. Spencer has a loving family, unlike Warren, who clearly has father issues and whose mom divorces him in front of Spencer when they have him over for dinner. Eric joins later on because they need a third guy for the robbery, but he is an intelligent accounting major who is way too smart for his professors. Chas is the tough jockish guy who Warren asks to join later cause they need a getaway driver. He is also rich. Like I said, I guess they were just bored.

The movie begins with a quote, which I’m trying to remember but I think it was from Darwin. It is an awkward sentence that I did not understand reading it when it appeared and I ran through it several times in my head. Not good. Then we see a close shot of a dark painting of a crow I think, extreme insert on its creepy eye. It cuts from there to Warren’s eye as he is disguising himself for the day of the heist. I thought immediately of Kubrick’s jarring jump cut in 2001 (I think that makes sense since this movie can’t stop making movie references, as I’ll point out more later).

Anyway, after the quotes and titles it starts with the day of the heist, and it is scored and cut intensely, like a dark thriller. Right as the four of them, dressed as old men, are about to enter the library it snaps back to 18 months prior so we can see the events before as buildup. But later on in the runtime when we return to the heist is it cut and scored like a comedy, and maybe that’ll work for you but I’m trying to explain something really weird about this experience.

It can’t decide what it wants to be. Intercut along all I’ve described are the four REAL life guys who pulled off the heist. The real Spencer and Warren and Chas and Eric, all giving snippets of their version of the story. But instead of going full Rashomon, the movie only partly has them as unreliable narrators at times. Sometimes we see events unfold in the past, then corrected to be the right way from another person’s point of view. Sometimes things happen and then are later said to not have happened. This all could have been fine and dandy, but these moments and cuts come at the most awkward times. And instead of letting us getting invested in the drama of the actors, we are forced to experience a documentary. It doesn’t work most of the time.

It says something though, that the heist scene had me on the edge of my seat (as much as something this stupid could, anyway). Because this scene is filmmed and cut expertly, and Evan Peters is proving himself to be a terrific actor. And because it is not ruined with a random jarring cut to the real life guys talking.

Too many questions are brought up watching this movie. Why did they do it? Was it really so easy for them to just walk into a library and take care of one librarian to access a $12 million book? It this is all 100% real, some creative liberties should have been taken. It’s just too stupid.

I think the actors all try their best. I kinda forgot about Chas. Barry Keoghan does good at times as Spencer, but then seems just too one note at others. I liked Jared Abrahamson as Eric, I think he could be great in better roles.

Evan Peters is the best among them. He was Quicksilver in the newer X men films. I think he seems able to have that knack to switch between comedy and drama, which is extremely difficult for any actor to pull off. American Animals has him at both extremes, and maybe he did better than anyone could with such weak material.

But the movie references. There are so many. The characters openly cite famous movies. In one scene they sit down and binge old heist films to prepare for their own. The heist itself has the exact dolly in shot of Heath Ledger’s Joker in Dark Knight as he’s waiting for the car to pick him up. Hence why I’m not crazy to think of Kubrick in that opening.

Another big mistake is that they go for a cringeworthy Indie moment in an important sequence near the end involving the feds. It’s bad. A dumb, made for Indie movies song loops and it goes on for a few minutes and is not effective at all. Damn. The movie was so good at not reminding us it is an indie, and they choose this of all scenes to blast us. I fucking hate indie moments.

I liked portions of American Animals, was taken out of more, and just too confused to care at others. At some point deep into the movie, my friend and I asked each other “What the fuck is going on?”. The movie sure can’t decide. And once it reaches its climax it drags. Oh man it drags and I just wanted to walk out. This story was already not too cinematic or compelling to begin with, but you gotta drag this shit out to nearly 2 hours for no reason at all? Fuck. And the experimental docudrama stuff works against itself a lot of the time. One of the best moments comes at the end with a reaction, and then later a line by the real life Warren, and it was the most powerful thing I saw in the entire runtime. The majority of those cuts back and forth and just too disparaging and honestly puzzling. The script needed serious work. This kind of material requires a fine precision, rather than shaky handling. They should have taken a page from Band of Brothers, and just had the real life guys talk at the very beginning and then at the very end. Or they should have more effectively and consistently placed them throughout rather than at so many of the wrong moments. What a shame.