Much ado about nothing

Rating: 4/10 (6 February 2011)

I have heard this movie talked about for years and I always assumed it would be good. I finally watched it last night. The best thing about seeing this movie is ---- that watching it is no longer in my future.
i am bewildered as to how this can be so popular. I believe that people confuse the topic/storyline with its actual quality. This movie is about drugs, a topic with counterculture appeal. Movies about drugs and crime are usually overrated. It doesn't hurt having Jennifer Connelly naked in a few scenes either. But I'm really confused as to what makes this a good film...
The entire storyline of the mother and the gameshow was annoying, boring, uninteresting and lame. These scenes were 50% of the movie. The back and forth between the Connelly/Leto/crazy mother at the end was just unbearable.
Poor writing:
1) I was never convinced that these guys were junkies or addicts. Yet the minute the coke in Coney Island 'dried up', Connelly was turning tricks and Leto was pale, skinny and disheveled. The scene before Leto and Wayans started dealing, they convinced each other to just take a taste in order to evaluate the product just for 'business'. I thought for sure this would turn into a situation where they killed their supply in 48 hours. But in fact, they were controlled and professional and literally just had a taste. Even the supplier in the limo liked Wayans because he 'wasn't a junkie', hence offering the promotion. You can't write in these qualities and then try to make these guys hapless addicts. The world doesn't work like this.
2) I never knew Marlon Wayans was working for anyone and never heard a mention of the names of the gangstas in the limo.. and all of a sudden there is a scene with Wayans in the back of a limo getting a 'promotion', and having his life threatened by hardcore high-level dealers?
3) the scene in the back of the grocery store where they deal huge bags out of a briefcase in plain sight to a rowdy mob... really?
4) the whole Connelly 'art store' business or whatever that was... you can't write in a 3 minute scene and expect it to have any sort of impact. What is the point of all of these undeveloped stories?
5) Who gets arrested for bringing a friend to the hospital? Someone please explain this to me.
these are just some examples, but the bottom line is this was poorly written and the story wasn't very good. it takes more than close-ups of a dilating pupil to make a drug movie good.