I'm about to go insane.
Les is less than average. He has a bland job handing out parking tickets. His best friends run a grungy comic book shop that Les frequents. Les decides to improve his life by joining in on a clinical study for an anti-depressant called “Special”. Les begins to take the medication and soon realizes he has superpowers – but with a twist. The twist is that he doesn’t actually have super powers.
It is now time to rate the movie, and I give this movie a 6/10. Why am I rating it now? Because I’m about to get all spoilerific in this business. So please, if you’re going to watch this movie don’t read what is below this paragraph, and the obligatory bold-all-caps warning below.
HOLY SHIT SPOILERS BELOW, IF YOU DIDN’T KNOW THAT, YOU WERE PROBABLY ONLY SKIMMING.
With a simple plot, this movie showed some promise. Michael Rapaport is a great actor and he plays crazy well. The cinematography was also well done, as the movie progresses the camerawork gets increasingly more chaotic. Rapaport parallels the camera work with his acting to create an extremely frightening personality. Even when other characters don’t carry through (i.e. stutter master [more on her later]) he’s able to keep his acting together and freak out in a controlled fashion on screen. When you throw in the mostly medical-drama soundtrack, it makes for some really surreal scenes. Les’s two friends, played by Robert Baker and Josh Peck put on a decent performance, with Josh Peck being the superior actor. Unfortunately, the movie takes a turn for the worse when they start to work in an overarching plot.
With a simple plot, this movie showed some promise. Michael Rapaport is a great actor and he plays crazy well. The cinematography was also well done, as the movie progresses the camerawork gets increasingly more chaotic. Rapaport parallels the camera work with his acting to create an extremely frightening personality. Even when other characters don’t carry through (i.e. stutter master [more on her later]) he’s able to keep his acting together and freak out in a controlled fashion on screen. When you throw in the mostly medical-drama soundtrack, it makes for some really surreal scenes. Les’s two friends, played by Robert Baker and Josh Peck put on a decent performance, with Josh Peck being the superior actor. Unfortunately, the movie takes a turn for the worse when they start to work in an overarching plot.
What do you get when you put three nerds in a car? A very nerdy car.
What was keeping this movie afloat was its fresh look at a stale character: the superhero. It takes a normally bizarre situation and grounds it in reality; to portray the superhero archetype as what equates to a bum with mental issues. If this movie had just stayed in a semi-realistic environment the entire movie and took itself seriously, it could have really been good. Unfortunately, there was a decision made sometime during the creation of this film to instead make it another underfunded, mediocre film. And that’s sad.
Almost exactly halfway through the film two lawyers from the pharmaceutical company producing Special try and coerce Les into not taking the medicine. They give a big speech about how they only want Les to stop taking the medication and to quit running around in his “silly suit”. Unfortunately, Les is tripping balls at the moment and sees himself from the future and ends up stabbing the lawyer in the ear with a chopstick. After Les does a sweet dodge-roll out of the lawyer-mobile, the lawyers decide it’s time to kill Les. Perhaps if the lawyers had pursued normal means of getting the medication from Les, for instance doing anything except trying to kill him, then this movie could have really developed into something by keeping the focus on Les and not the bizarre lawyers.
The scene gets worse. The dude who was just stabbed in the ear cranks it to 11 and yells at the driver to chase Les. There is a short chase scene on foot, and unexpectedly Les falls to the ground. The movie shines through once again, showing it’s originality by having Les attack himself with his psychosis. He’s mentally trapped himself inside a “force field” that the lawyers have created to contain him. As the lawyer stares on in confusion, Les is hearing voices in his head taunting him and then Les teleports and punches the lawyer in the face.
Let’s pause for a brief moment. This is the only scene in the movie that has no rational explanation behind it, in any way. Les just for these few seconds can magically teleport. He then, spouting the classiest line from the book says: “Your force field is good, my teleporting is better.” It’s almost as if the writer’s couldn’t resolve this scene so they paid a homeless man to do it, or just gave up and wrote in some half-assed inexplicable scene that really sinks the film.
As it stands, there is currently one lawyer who is stabbed and another who is punched. At this point, the best plan of action for the lawyers is to wait it out. You see, dear reader, Les hallucinates only as long as he has Special pills, which means that he can’t hallucinate for long since he has a really small bottle of large pills. So, the lawyers who tried to coerce Les into ceasing medication and not suing so that they can save face have now decided to take an alternative route. This alternative route being pre-meditated murder.
The lawyers now kidnap Les, and take him to an abandoned train station to kill him. Les is getting absolutely wrecked by these two Lawyers, and in a stroke of absolute genius picks up a conveniently located wooden stick and flails it around like a moron – this results in the two lawyers being defeated. Don’t get me wrong, this scene is actually pretty cool; it just has no substance behind it. All this scene serves to do is have Les showdown with these clearly unfit-to-be-lawyer lawyers.
Les, now bloody and only semi-tripping balls, stumbles into a grocery store and collapses. The pretty girl working the cash register is clearly terrified, and wants to do everything she can to help this man. Unfortunately, she has a terrible stutter which makes the obligatory small talk they go through excruciatingly painful to listen to – all of this as Les is bleeding profusely onto the floor of the supermarket. The goal of the cashier in this scene is to get Les into the bathroom and to lock him in there to detox. There was absolutely no reason for her to stutter, especially since she can’t do it well. She can talk totally normal for important lines, but when it’s just small talk her lips and throat go all gimpy. It’s almost a bonus, because whenever she’s about to say something that serves as meaningless filler, you can’t really understand it.
What was keeping this movie afloat was its fresh look at a stale character: the superhero. It takes a normally bizarre situation and grounds it in reality; to portray the superhero archetype as what equates to a bum with mental issues. If this movie had just stayed in a semi-realistic environment the entire movie and took itself seriously, it could have really been good. Unfortunately, there was a decision made sometime during the creation of this film to instead make it another underfunded, mediocre film. And that’s sad.
Almost exactly halfway through the film two lawyers from the pharmaceutical company producing Special try and coerce Les into not taking the medicine. They give a big speech about how they only want Les to stop taking the medication and to quit running around in his “silly suit”. Unfortunately, Les is tripping balls at the moment and sees himself from the future and ends up stabbing the lawyer in the ear with a chopstick. After Les does a sweet dodge-roll out of the lawyer-mobile, the lawyers decide it’s time to kill Les. Perhaps if the lawyers had pursued normal means of getting the medication from Les, for instance doing anything except trying to kill him, then this movie could have really developed into something by keeping the focus on Les and not the bizarre lawyers.
The scene gets worse. The dude who was just stabbed in the ear cranks it to 11 and yells at the driver to chase Les. There is a short chase scene on foot, and unexpectedly Les falls to the ground. The movie shines through once again, showing it’s originality by having Les attack himself with his psychosis. He’s mentally trapped himself inside a “force field” that the lawyers have created to contain him. As the lawyer stares on in confusion, Les is hearing voices in his head taunting him and then Les teleports and punches the lawyer in the face.
Let’s pause for a brief moment. This is the only scene in the movie that has no rational explanation behind it, in any way. Les just for these few seconds can magically teleport. He then, spouting the classiest line from the book says: “Your force field is good, my teleporting is better.” It’s almost as if the writer’s couldn’t resolve this scene so they paid a homeless man to do it, or just gave up and wrote in some half-assed inexplicable scene that really sinks the film.
As it stands, there is currently one lawyer who is stabbed and another who is punched. At this point, the best plan of action for the lawyers is to wait it out. You see, dear reader, Les hallucinates only as long as he has Special pills, which means that he can’t hallucinate for long since he has a really small bottle of large pills. So, the lawyers who tried to coerce Les into ceasing medication and not suing so that they can save face have now decided to take an alternative route. This alternative route being pre-meditated murder.
The lawyers now kidnap Les, and take him to an abandoned train station to kill him. Les is getting absolutely wrecked by these two Lawyers, and in a stroke of absolute genius picks up a conveniently located wooden stick and flails it around like a moron – this results in the two lawyers being defeated. Don’t get me wrong, this scene is actually pretty cool; it just has no substance behind it. All this scene serves to do is have Les showdown with these clearly unfit-to-be-lawyer lawyers.
Les, now bloody and only semi-tripping balls, stumbles into a grocery store and collapses. The pretty girl working the cash register is clearly terrified, and wants to do everything she can to help this man. Unfortunately, she has a terrible stutter which makes the obligatory small talk they go through excruciatingly painful to listen to – all of this as Les is bleeding profusely onto the floor of the supermarket. The goal of the cashier in this scene is to get Les into the bathroom and to lock him in there to detox. There was absolutely no reason for her to stutter, especially since she can’t do it well. She can talk totally normal for important lines, but when it’s just small talk her lips and throat go all gimpy. It’s almost a bonus, because whenever she’s about to say something that serves as meaningless filler, you can’t really understand it.
My stuttering only solidifies my worthlessness.
The movie then quickly snowballs to a conclusion, where Les is run over twice by the lawyers, and then says some lines about never giving up. The end. What’s the meaning behind all of this? Best guess is that corporations are evil and ruthless. Same with those god damn pharmaceutical companies. It’s really a shame that they took so much of the plot and depth away from Les, the best part of this movie. With Rapaport’s acting they could have taken this film in a more realistic direction where the medication helps him deal with his insecurities, even though it’s not technically working. Instead, it’s about evil lawyers who will stop at nothing to commit murder, something they should have learned is illegal in law school.
So yeah, the films an entertaining experience, even if it’s lacking any real meaning or message. I’m going to recommend it anyways, despite the poor writing, just because of Michael Rapaport and the concept behind this movie. Clearly don’t put this on your “To Watch” list ahead of Slumdog Millionaire or The Wrestler, but if you’re in the mood for a movie and you’ve got nothing else, at least it’s entertaining.
The movie then quickly snowballs to a conclusion, where Les is run over twice by the lawyers, and then says some lines about never giving up. The end. What’s the meaning behind all of this? Best guess is that corporations are evil and ruthless. Same with those god damn pharmaceutical companies. It’s really a shame that they took so much of the plot and depth away from Les, the best part of this movie. With Rapaport’s acting they could have taken this film in a more realistic direction where the medication helps him deal with his insecurities, even though it’s not technically working. Instead, it’s about evil lawyers who will stop at nothing to commit murder, something they should have learned is illegal in law school.
So yeah, the films an entertaining experience, even if it’s lacking any real meaning or message. I’m going to recommend it anyways, despite the poor writing, just because of Michael Rapaport and the concept behind this movie. Clearly don’t put this on your “To Watch” list ahead of Slumdog Millionaire or The Wrestler, but if you’re in the mood for a movie and you’ve got nothing else, at least it’s entertaining.
6/10.
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