Butler's Cinema Scene

Barry Keoghan, Evan Peters

“AMERICAN ANIMALS” My rating: C+ 

116 minutes | MPAA rating: R

In “American Animals” four college-age doofuses  rob a university library of a priceless copy of Audubon’s massive Birds of America.

Based on real events, the film is as much about these losers’ deluded dreams as it is about the planning and execution of the heist.

Writer/director Bart Layton attempts to add perspective to this shambling crime story by alternating between fictional recreations of the robbery and interviews with the actual participants. Now in their mid-30s, these men sometimes contradict one another…when that happens Layton will often replay a scene “Rashomon”-style, now altered to reflect a different individual’s memories (or inventions).

Spencer (Barry Keoghan) and Warren (Evan Peters) are childhood friends attending different colleges in Lexington, KY.  They are bored, unfulfilled children of Middle America, and when they learn that the Transylvania University library has a locked-down room displaying  the Audubon book and other treasures (like a first edition of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species) they begin to consider if they could rob the place.

The robbers in disguise

Initially this is a what-if pipe dream. They watch old heist movies, looking for pointers. They construct a detailed scale model of the special collections vault.

They recruit a couple of other college bozos (Blake Jenner, Jared Abrahamson) to provide muscle and a getaway car.

Warren even flies to Europe (or at least he claims he has) to deal with a fence (Udo Kier) who could sell the Audubon on the international black market.

The actual robbery attempt will require the four young men to hide behind old-age makeup; more troubling, it will mean threatening — possibly even torturing — the librarian (Ann Dowd) who oversees the special collection  and has access to all the keys.

Here’s the problem: these bozos are not particularly likable, especially when they show little reluctance to manhandle a terrified middle-aged woman.

Ultimately “American Animals” doesn’t know what it’s trying to say or how it feels about its characters, who are often lying to each other (and in the case of the real-life miscreants, lying to us viewers).

 |Robert W. Butler