The Next Big Thing

Intelligently crafted with wry humor throughout. Almost like a New Yorker cartoon in its portrayal of upper class follies. Anyone who has seen Basquiat, which is NOT a fanciful rendition of actual events, will recognize that The Next Big Thing basically keeps it real. It is not a crass lampoon of the art world, as other reviews allege, but a finely detailed imagining of how one accident might lead to another to produce a breakout artist. It plays out as a visualization of a funny story one might hear in conversation, with unlikely twists and turns - the sort of facts that make a true story actually funny. Surely the lives of actual artists who've broken into the big time involve a twist and turn here and there, a crazy accident that seems funny in retrospect (but which would have seemed agonizing to live out in real life). Anyone wondering if this movie is worth watching deserves to hear resoundingly that it really is worthwhile. It deserves a higher IMDb rating, and only suffers a sub 6 rating because it is so intelligently made that average viewers don't appreciate its fine subtleties.