'IGBY' WILL GIVE YOU THAT SHRINKING FEELING.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

KIERAN CULKIN - yes, a younger brother of that one - impressed earlier this year in ``The Secret Life of Altar Boys.'' Now ``Igby Goes Down'' proves that that performance was no fluke.

While many around him indulge in arch mannerisms, Culkin maintains a spontaneous, natural intelligence as the troubled son of an East Coast society family in precipitous decline. Although he goes through any number of Holden Caulfield motions, Culkin's Igby is always his own wayward rebel, fighting his way into adulthood like all of them but fending off demons too personal to face with mere poses and cliches.

Igby (not, as it turns out, his real name) is the youngest son of Mimi and Jason Slocumb (not, as it turns out ... well, see for yourself). Played by Susan Sarandon and Bill Pullman, she's a pill-popping, sarcasm-dripping lady of leisure; his schizophrenia got the best of him when Igby was still a child, and obviously affected the impressionable boy's world view. Igby's older brother Oliver (Ryan Phillippe, recycling the ``Cruel Intentions'' sneer) attends Columbia and, when the younger sibling misbehaves, tells the always accusatory Mimi, ``I was in college. Igby is not my fault.''

Coming from such a supportive home, it's no wonder Igby ditches prep school, goes AWOL from a military academy and gets slapped by his psychologist. He's pretty obnoxious, it's true, but he's honestly searching for something, too.

This quest for meaning leads him to crash in the downtown loft occupied by would-be dancer/definitely-is junkie Rachel (Amanda Peet) and paid for by Igby's godfather D.H., a ruthless financier played, in the movie's other imaginative performance, by Jeff Goldblum.

Vamped and betrayed by both Rachel and Sookie (Claire Danes), a seemingly more idealistic daughter of privilege, the already unstable lad has to come to terms with the shattering prospect that the world is just as messed up as his family - and he - is.

It all sounds like fairly rote coming-of-age trauma, and in a fundamental way it is. But writer-director Burr Steers, whose own background the movie references, has a way of giving Igby the most complex and telling perspectives (for a 17-year-old, anyway), and a vocabulary that, writerly as it may be, sounds like the way such a bright and angry boy would express himself.

A theater director and actor himself, Steers also did an excellent job of guiding Culkin physically. Igby's sulkiness, sense of adolescent superiority, moral framework and bouts of sheer terror are expertly communicated through the actor's stances, body language and deep-set eyes.

As indicated earlier, though, Steers lets most of the other actors overchew limited conceptions. For example, Sarandon's highly polished delivery of Mimi's sniffier lines can be very funny, but since most of them are directed at the character's younger son, they feel out of register with Culkin's more organic zingers.

This can try your patience as much as the conceit that we should care about the comfortable classes' personal problems. But give ``Igby Goes Down'' credit for taking its subject seriously regardless, and for having the grace to make good, fearless fun of it in the bargain.

IGBY GOES DOWN - Three stars

(Rated R: sex, drug use, nudity, language, violence, children in jeopardy)

Starring: Kieran Culkin, Claire Danes, Jeff Goldblum, Jared Harris, Amanda Peet, Ryan Phillippe, Bill Pullman, Susan Sarandon.

Director: Burr Steers.

Running time: 1 hr. 38 min.

Playing: Galleria Stadium 16, Sherman Oaks; Rialto, South Pasadena; Century 14, Century City; Arclight, Hollywood; The Grove, L.A.; Cineplex Broadway, Santa Monica; University, Irvine.

In a nutshell: Screwed-up rich kid discovers there are worse lives than his in quirky coming-of-age story.

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Kieran Culkin has family issues in ``Igby Goes Down.''