In Osbourne's world of privilege and power, Finn and Liz encounter the super rich, a tribe portrayed as fiercer and more mysterious than anything the teenager might find in the South American jungle.

The inspiration for the novel on which the film is based is author Dirk Wittenborn’s experiences growing up in a modest household and feeling like an outsider among the super-rich in an upper-crust New Jersey enclave.

"[10] Writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, critic Steven Winn reported that the film "plays like a movie that some teenage boy cooked up in his chemistry lab.

There are lots of potent things floating around in it [...] but the mix just sits there without producing any notable reactions," that Dunne "has more storylines than he knows what to do with," and that the film "becomes by turns portentous, violent and finally very silly.

"[11] Nick Schager of Slant Magazine wrote that the film "is structured around the type of analogy that makes one pine for total sensory failure," that it is marred by "the filmmakers’ clear self-satisfaction with what they believe to be a clever narrative conceit," and that "just around the corner from [its] excruciatingly contrived premise lies a giant heap of bland satire.