Talk:American Psycho

Pee Review

Humour:	7	OK, being somewhat acquainted with the subject matter (read the book, not seen the film) I think I am reasonably qualified to review this one. The article is pretty good and amused me well enough, there were a couple of things that I would recommend you take a look at. The first thing that struck me upon completing the article was that the speaking character, who I assume the reader is supposed to be, seems to be all over the place in terms of his defining characteristics, I'll go into his characterisation a bit more in the next section, but with regard to the humour you seem unsure how best to use him. At times you use him as the straight guy juxtaposed against the rich and arrogant Bateman, but at other times he seems eager to go along with the activities that Bateman suggests, this made me feel that his input into the article and thus Bateman's responses to him have less of an impact on the humour than they could have done. I think that you should consider different ways to have Bateman interact with the reader's character. Permit me to explain, it is far more interesting to put a character who is wholly good or wholly evil into a situation as their reactions can be expected to be more extreme than that of anybody else. I am not suggesting that you completely remove anything from the article that makes the reader's character sound less than angelic, but I would suggest that you replace the willingness they display, for example when he just suddenly accepts everything that is going on, with naïvety. My feeling was that you would have been better portraying the character as a rising star in the business world who Bateman takes it upon himself to educate and then kill. I think that if you tried something like that you wouldn't have one of the other problems that bothered me, the near instantaneous trust that the character displays for Bateman, he literally is just picked off the street by Bateman and then in the next section they are back in his office and on the way out for lunch. This all seemed to move too fast to seem right, I'm not recommending that you portray a montage of friendship and trust between the two, but simply suggesting that if there was a way you could work the article round so that the characters have an existing bond of trust, for instance if the character worked under Bateman then he would obviously not question this. This is just a suggestion, ultimately it is your decision and I will not press you to decide one way or the other. I enjoyed your jokes in Bateman's narrative and I think you realise the character pretty well over the course of the article, I especially liked the jokes like "murders and acquisitions" that draw directly on the novel, that was a good one in particular because it can be amusing to people who have never read the book or seen the film. It is your accessibility that I thought stumbled a bit when you got to the actual murder obviously if you have read the novel you will know that Bateman regularly breaks up the book's narrative to critique various musicians including Genesis, but for someone who doesn't know this I got the feeling that it would be pretty difficult to see where the joke is here, you go some distance to mitigating it by using the reader's narrative who has no idea what is going on either, but I still felt a bit weak to me. My recommendation is that you go back and decide whether you are happy with it, try finding someone who hasn't ever heard of the novel or film and asking them to read it, see what they think and then revise accordingly. My final point is that in the novels one can see the deterioration of Bateman's mental state and I felt that if you tried to carry this across to your article a bit more you would encounter greater success, at the moment you start with Bateman being a bit weird and then weirder, and then he stays consistent until the murdering happens, while this fits in with parts of the book I though including a couple more instances where insanity shows through Bateman's façade, which the reader's character fails to notice would have worked a bit better. Again this is up to you. My current impression is that this is a good read for those who are familiar with the subject matter and a reasonable one for those who are not, I think with a little more work on your humour this can be excellent on both of these, you are nearly there, just a bit more work is needed.
Concept:	7	I like the idea behind the article, essentially following an observer through a whirlwind of Bateman's daily activities, ultimately leading up to murder. As I said above, the weakest point, I feel, is the relatively poor characterisation of the reader's character, he is essentially a no-hoper that Bateman plucks off the street and eventually kills, as I mentioned above there is no reason for trust between the reader's character and Bateman and I was uncertain why the character is so eager to get involved with a total stranger, especially as no threats of violence are made to encourage them to stay. I was left between two conclusions, the first being that the character is supposed to be a bit dense, which I suppose I could buy into with the drug taking and job interview at McDonalds, or that you were uncertain how to characterise the him appropriately. My suggestion is that you look for a way to provide some kind of bond of trust between the reader's character and Bateman to start with. On the other hand, Bateman's dialogue is excellent and really sums up the character's self-obsessed nature, I like the way he restates the things he is proud of and so obviously looks down on the reader. If you can characterise the reader to the same extent then you will have done excellently here.
Prose and formatting:	9	Some excellent work on this one, the spelling and grammar is pretty good and I only noticed a couple of minor errors as I read through, just make sure you are proofreading as you work on it just to minimise such errors, you are obviously good enough at this to not require help, but the proofreading service is always around should you feel that a second pair of eyes would be desirable. As to your image formatting that is pretty good too, my only suggestion is that you consider removing one of the images relating to the prostitute part of the article, having two images there makes the section start look a bit crowded, this is a very minor issue and cosmetic in value only, my advice is that you take a look and then decide what to do with it.
Images:	8	Good images and captions at the moment, my main problem here is that I thought some images to restate some of the points Bateman particularly likes making, about his suit for instance or his secretary, some images of those, I felt, may have worked a bit better than the images you have, I'm not suggesting you go back and change your images, merely suggesting it so that you may consider it. As I said the current images are fine, though you might want to take a look at a couple of the later captions, I felt you might have been able to do a bit better.
Miscellaneous:	8	My overall grade of the article.
Final Score:	39	A highly enjoyable piece of work and an interesting and intelligent take on a good book. Your efforts are being hampered slightly by a few small problems which, if you can devote some time to them, I think you will be able to sort out. However the article is doing well in its current form and would be satisfactory should you make no changes, but I feel that if you press on and keep working it can be excellent. If you have any questions or comments for me then feel free to leave them on my talk page. Good luck making any changes.
Reviewer:	--ChiefjusticePS3 13:22, February 25, 2010 (UTC)