Frenetic and fun but should have been more thoughtful

Rating: Null/10 (29 October 2011)

It isn't actually true that we only use a fraction of our brain - as suggested by this movie - but it's certainly the case that sometimes we're much sharper than others and that we can't recall most of what we once knew. So, suppose there was a drug - let's call it NZT - that would enable you to be super-sharp all the time and remember everything you ever knew; suppose you were a writer - let's call him Eddie Morra - who couldn't actually get the words down and had just lost his girlfriend; suppose you were offered a tablet of NZT for free. Would you take it and, if it worked, would you want more? Is the Pope a Catholic?
It's a really good role for young Bradley Cooper as Eddie because he is rarely off the screen and essentially has two roles to play with some disturbing in-between scenes. He also gets to act opposite screen veteran Robert de Niro who is always watchable. Then there's Abbie Cornish, looking sweeter than Sweet Pea in "Sucker Punch", as the girlfriend who knows nothing about NZT and an almost unrecognisable Anna Friel as the ex-wife who knows far too much about NZT.
The structure of the movie works well, opening at a particularly dramatic moment and then flashing back to how the drug-fuelled odyssey began, and the style is entertaining, with some frenetic camera-work that could fool you into thinking you'd actually taken something yourself. But it's all a bit too glossy, with no time to ponder on the wider moral implications of such a wonder drug, and a particularly lame ending.