Fantasia for the drug crowd

Rating: 2/10 (14 September 2006)

If you are in that stage of life where you think drugs are a means of rebellion and thus cool, you'll love this movie.
The plot is driven forward as with a whip, with nothing following naturally. The plot is forced into contortions to segue into dance and/or music scenes.
This movie tries to capture some indie-flick grit and street cred, but it can't shuck its Hollywood origins or its happy Hollywood ending.
There are lavish special effects showing the wonders of the drug experience. There is lots of music, including a cameo by Bono that unlike most of the other music scenes is almost entirely close-up face shots. Hey, they got Bono, and they wanted to make the most of it.
Actually, there *was* a close-up face shot of Prudence (most of the characters are named from Beatles songs) that showed an unrealistic three ear piercings, making me wonder at that early stage exactly when the movie was supposed to be taking place. Prudence, a repressed lesbian, gazes longingly after a series of women. At one point, in a too-obvious and insufficiently-funny scene, Prudence locks herself in a closet, at which all of her friends ask her to come out - their cue to sing "Dear Prudence". The movie is loaded with that sort of "wit".
There was a consistently strange disregard for little details... For instance, there were several street corner scenes where the buildings were painted to look stereotypically "sixties", but the set dressing ignored large swaths of non-foreground scenery.
I just can't condone a pro-drug movie like this. This movie is almost an advertisement for LSD, between the tie-dyed dance scenes and the trippy happy computer-generated-and-enhanced graphics. There's no down-side to drugs. In this world, tripping is happy and rewarding and leads to deep insights into life.
Another sin here is the trivialization of the horrors of Viet Nam and the impact it had on the folks that came back from it mangled mentally and physically.
I think that as an antidote to seeing this film, folks should immediately go out and watch "Requiem for a Dream", a far more accurate look at the impact of drugs. Sure, that's heroin, not LSD, but the lifestyle that includes the one easily leads to the other.
From five miles up, I'd have to call this movie very pretty but quite irresponsible.