'Reefer Madness' with technical flourishes: the subject deserves better handling

Rating: 3/10 (21 March 2001)

I need not recapitulate the several reasons for many viewers' disappointment in this film, reasons which have already been noted by other users. In my case, having decided to see the movie after reading rave reviews by trusted critics, it was one of those unfortunate let-downs.
One of the film's weak points is its clear-cut division of characters into ordinary folks (going through great suffering), and evil-doers (aware of that suffering and blithely indifferent to it). Life is more complicated. I also find fault with the film in that it suggests there is something especially degrading about a middle-class Euro-US young woman being sexually exploited by an Afro-American man. When a film cues viewers to experience revulsion at certain sexual acts in certain circumstances, I prefer this to be done without gratuitously pushing the buttons of race/class prejudice. Call me PC if you like.
Finally, I am not at all 'pro-drugs', but I can't help wondering if this movie will be ridiculed in years to come, just as the anti-hash film 'Reefer Madness' (1936) is ridiculed now. The subject, I am afraid, calls for a film that delivers more than technical flourishes and some fine acting.