Absolutely horrible
I've never watched a movie and been left with an overwhelming impulse to hunt down the director and flog them repeatedly with a strand of anal beads.....until now!
Clark Gregg took a brilliant book ready to stand side by side on the silver screen next to Fight Club and instead threw up a hollow shell that really just amounted to a retelling of the plot points from the book. He left out the most important element which is of course Palahniuk's sharp witted deadpan narration.
As other people have touched on Fincher and Ed Norton nailed it in Fight Club but in this film Clark Gregg absolutely ruined it. Palahniuk is a brilliant satirist, a modern day Kurt Vonnegut, but without his narrative voice reacting to all of the ridiculous things going on in the story it feels more like an episode of My Name is Earl than a Palahniuk story.
Watching the movie you get the sense that even the actors know it's not working and are just going through the motions the best they can. Clark basically wrote an outline of all the plot points from the book and tried to mimic them leaving out most of palahniuk's narration and not adding any imagination, style or wit. The voice over narration he does include leaves out 95% of Palahniuk's best material. The book had me belly laughing time and again. Palahniuk's writes in simple language but he has a brilliant dry wit and cynicism that's unmistakable.
It's like Clark Greg was afraid to copy finchers fight club style so he went in a completely opposite mind numbingly generic direction. Director Clark Greg, also the screenwriter, had the nerve to cast himself in the role as the magistrate of colonial dunsboro. A character that was present perhaps one scene in the book, Clark writes himself in multiple new scenes for the character, none of which are funny. Go figure.
Why is it not surprising Clark Gregg's directing credits only include this movie. Thank God I'm not the only one that believes he should never be behind a camera again.
If anyone has yet to read the book, please please don't let this atrocity scare you away. The book is absolutely brilliant!