How sad is this?

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

No movie has captured the dark side if the 80s like Less Than Zero. The overindulgence era at its finest. The cast is is fantastic, a truly underrated performance by Robert Downey Jr. And James Spader. Jamie Gertz gets an A+ for her part of Blair. The soundtrack is an amazing undervalued masterpiece.

yet another mid80s film starring young actors for which i fail to understand the criticisms.as a standalone piece, it's excellent. casting is spot-on; even jami gertz who gives the weakest performance seems at home in her role, straddling strong loyalties for her two leading men. given that LESS THAN ZERO turned out to be almost entirely prophetic re: a certain young actor whose name rhymes with "hobart towney" it's hard to justify the resistance to the anti drug stance. i thought mccarthy did a good job of seeming exceptionally ambivalent to the libertinism surrounding him while remaining somewhat apart from it all.some really nice shots of just about everything. if watching downey chew furniture for an hour and a half isn't your cup of tea, it's worth checking out as a document of LA mid-80s.not bad on a purely hyperbolic/camp level either, as drug films tend to be. i was slightly amused by all the gay for pay action, drug pushers in vintage hot tubs with floating brick mobile phones, graffiti in couplets ("julian gives good head and is dead").always felt that there was a bit of a homoerotic subtext between julian and clay as their scenes together are so nice and understated. as if to underscore this point, the ladies don't do much undressing in this one and instead let the gents be nude and sexy.i thought it ended too fast but apparently overdosing is A Thing and so are bad cuts, so perhaps was not an entirely fatal artistic decision. the graveyard scene tacked on at the end seems entirely unnecessary tho. have learnt thru research that they had to reshoot like half of it in order to please the more conservative studio + mass audiences which may explain the thematic unevenness.

They tried to make Less than zero into a movie, but they had to censor some parts, probably too hard for the movie. But the success of the novel was the traumatizing things that happened to Clay and his friends, and if you censorship that in order to make a 'watchable' movie, you are going to fail.Let's remember that in the novel there are the rape of a twelve year old, a pimp injecting heroin into Julian's arm, and a dead boy of an overdose in an alley. You lose all that in the movie by censuring it. And I'm not defending the horrible things that happened in the book, I'm just saying that Less than zero was kinda of a morbid reading.Another thing they ignored (and it couldn't be because of censorship) was the ad that said 'DISSAPPEAR HERE', that constantly followed Clay through the city.

"A college student goes home for Christmas and finds that his girlfriend and best friend have become cocaine addicts." Aw yes the decadent 80's. If you grew up during this time then you will have a special appreciation for this movie. It definitely captures an era with relevant music, clothing and several brat pack stars doing some decent acting (especially Robert Downey). The story itself is intriguing, gritty and sad with a strong anti-drug message.Andrew McCarthy is Clay who returns from college to spend Christmas with his wealthy family in Beverly Hills. His former girlfriend (Jami Gertz) is now involved with his best friend Julian (Downey) and both of them are in trouble. Julian's drug use has spiraled out of control and he owes huge debts to a dealer. James Spader plays a real slim bucket here, I had forgotten how good looking he was back in the day. 07.13