Partly a true-life crime drama, partly a comedy, director Bart Layton has certainly come up with a new way to view the classic heist movie. Rotten Tomatoes describes American Animals as "The unbelievable but true story of four young men who brazenly attempt to execute one of the most audacious art heists in US history. Determined to live lives that are out of the ordinary, they formulate a daring plan for the perfect robbery, only to discover that the plan has taken on a life of its own".
The film starts off fairly light-heartedly but gets darker when the two would-be master criminals bring in two other friends to help. "By the time Warren’s squaring his shoulders to taser the rare-books librarian, 'American Animals' has veered from sorta-true-crime quasi-comedy into a Scorsese-inflected look at the realities of attempting a theft of this magnitude" - Sara Stewart, New York Post.