Clay: “You don’t look happy.”
Blair: “But, do I look good?”
🥃🥃🥃🥃 Premium Pour – Highly Recommended
Less Than Zero (1987)
It’s a cold, neon elegy to a generation raised on everything—and left empty inside. There’s even a great scene in the movie when Clay (McCarthy) confronts Rip (Spader): “But you don’t need anything. You have everything,” Clay says.
Rip looks at him. “No. I don’t.”
“What?”
“No. I don’t.”
Pause, “Oh, shit, Rip, what don’t you have?”
“I don’t have anything to lose.”
More on this, and Spader, later.
Cocaine, coldness, and the cost of It all
Before there was Kids, before Havoc, before the on-screen chaos of privileged youth spiraling into oblivion became an indie genre unto itself, there was Less Than Zero.
Directed by Marek Kanievska and based loosely on Bret Easton Ellis’s novel, Less Than Zero is less a direct adaptation and more a distillation of its mood: a sleek, unsettling portrait of 1980s Los Angeles where wealth is abundant, but meaning is absent. Released in 1987, it was sold as a glossy cautionary tale—but time has revealed it as a ghost story about the rich and restless, haunting their own futures.
The Plot (like the characters, it’s aimless but doomed)
Clay (Andrew McCarthy), freshly back from his East Coast college for winter break, returns home to L.A. only to find his former high school friends in emotional and physical free-fall. Blair (Jami Gertz), his ex-girlfriend, was dating – but is now involved with him only on a drug fueled lifestyle – with their mutual friend Julian (Robert Downey Jr.), a charismatic trust-fund burnout deep in debt to a violent dealer, Rip. (James Spader, radiating menace in a silk suit). It’s as if since Clay has been gone, the middle has collapsed and Blair and Julian are now spiraling down together.
As Clay spends his break the animosity that has built up from his decision to leave them by themselves in LA, he tries to help Julian escape addiction and the terrifying consequences of Julian’s debt to Rip. Dealing with the fallout of his choices, the trio is caught in a swirl of superficial parties, high-end ennui, and the aching realization that youth isn’t eternal—especially when you’re already this numb.
Cast that cuts deep
It’s impossible to talk about Less Than Zero without focusing on Robert Downey Jr., whose performance as Julian is the aching, cracked heart of the film. He was just 22 years old and had yet to become Iron Man or Hollywood royalty—but in Less Than Zero, he wasn’t acting. He was bleeding. His raw, eerily prescient portrayal of a beautiful boy being consumed by addiction remains one of his finest performances. It was also prescient to his own public downfall and 3 years in prison in 1999.
Andrew McCarthy gives his signature soulful detachment as Clay, a straight man to the madness. Jami Gertz’s Blair feels like a caged butterfly—delicate, doomed, and complicit. James Spader as the sinister dealer Rip? Pure menace in mirrored sunglasses. This cast gave Gen-X its Rebel Without a Cause, The Outsiders, and Requiem for a Dream—all rolled into one.
Style and substance with a light cocaine-dusting
Visually, the film is soaked in L.A. winter light—warm in color, cold in spirit. There’s a chill that you can almost feel in every frame of this movie. And Tangerine Dream’s synthy score floats through scenes like ambient regret. Add in the clever mix of music from the Bangles, Danzig, LL Cool J, Public Enemy, even Roy Orbison, and you get a good taste of the menagerie of LA in 1987. The Beverly Hills mansions feel cavernous, impersonal. It’s what the 80s was about as the Boomer generation’s kids, Gene, finally got their chance at life; it’s wealth without warmth, intimacy without love, and pleasure without purpose.
Where the novel was nihilistic and alienating, the film leans into emotional devastation. It takes Ellis’s distant prose (written in the first person present tense – very hard to turn into screenplay content) and gives it tragic intimacy—particularly in the way it softens Clay’s detachment for leaving his friends behind and centering around Julian’s unraveling.
Reception: A cold shoulder at first
At the time of release, critics were mixed. Many found it stylish but emotionally manipulative, with Roger Ebert calling it “a beautifully crafted, smart and upsetting movie,” while others criticized it for moralizing while simultaneously fetishizing excess. Audiences didn’t flock to it either—it wasn’t a box office hit, grossing just $12.4 million domestically.
But over the years, Less Than Zero has found its place. It’s now seen as a proto-Gen X tragedy, a film that predicted the burnout of overexposed youth. It paved the way for the brutal honesty of Kids (1995) and the sexual and social self-destruction of Havoc (2005). It even echoes in the drug-fueled chaos of Euphoria today.
It also marked the beginning of serious attention on Robert Downey Jr. as an actor with immense range—and a life eerily mirroring his role.
The Legacy: Rich kids with nothing left to spend
Less Than Zero wasn’t ahead of its time—it was right on time, but no one wanted to hear the truth in 1987. Today, its honesty hits harder. It’s about the dangers of too much too young, of confusing access with freedom, and the loneliness of being surrounded by people but seen by no one.
It’s not fun, but it’s unforgettable.
The CocktailsandMovies.com bottom line
A sobering elegy in a champagne flute, Less Than Zero is the definitive look at 1980s youth in decay. Between its moody cinematography, a haunting performance by a young Downey Jr., and a soundtrack echoing across decades, this is a film that lingers long after the lights go out. It’s not just a cautionary tale—it’s a mirror. One we all looked into… and maybe didn’t like what we saw.
Streaming on Netflix.
And try the Beverly Chill that we created just for the movie.
