Roger Avary's adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' novel demonstrates, yet again after "American Psycho," the difficulty of transferring the author's distinctively satirical sensibility to the screen. An overstylized and audacious effort in which the filmmaker uses a seemingly endless number of photographic tricks to increasingly little effect, "The Rules of Attraction" should mainly garner interest for the thoroughly unpleasant manner in which it showcases such teen television icons as James Van Der Beek ("Dawson's Creek"), Jessica Biel ("7th Heaven") and even Fred Savage (so formerly lovable in "The Wonder Years"). Ellis' 1987 novel, updated here to the present day, follows a group of characters through a fall semester at an affluent liberal arts college in New England.

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