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Evelyn (Rachel Weisz) has an ulterior motive for transforming dumpy student Adam (Paul Rudd) into a new man.
Grade: B
Verdict: Neal LaBute shapes another etched-in-acid look at the battle of the sexes.
By ELEANOR RINGEL GILLESPIE
(none)
After the muted and sometimes muddle-headed "Possession," writer-director Neal LaBute revisits material he knows better than anyone -- the theater of cruelty that relationships between men and women can be. His "In the Company of Men" is generally regarded as the gold standard in the genre of sexual politics. The emotional evisceration in his new film, "The Shape of Things," is every bit as acute, but it ultimately lacks the lacerating impact of the earlier movie.
Based on LaBute's play of the same title, "Shape" shifts the playing field to a college campus. Adam (the sensational Paul Rudd), a dumpy schlump of a student, becomes an inexplicable object of affection for Evelyn (Rachel Weisz), a sophisticated, beautiful and highly opinionated MFA candidate hard at work on her master's thesis. Like a distaff Pygmalion, she "perfects" Paul -- getting him to shed a few pounds, to dress better, even to swap his glasses for contact lenses. Paul's best friends, Philip (Frederick Weller in the part Aaron Eckhart played in "Company") and Jenny (Gretchen Mol, sweet and tentative) are suspicious, but they have no idea of LaBute's -- I mean, Evelyn's -- soaked-in-acid motive.
Some may find the movie too schematic. Others, too shockingly cruel. But all's fair in love and art, according to LaBute. Make that, unfair.
