Over-hyped and Over-rated

Rating: 4/10 (10 August 2009)

The story of four people and drug addiction and how it destroys their lives.
The above is basically the whole of Requiem for a Dream summed up in one sentence. You don't need any more, because there isn't any more to the movie.
Even though RFAD has received massive acclaim, I just can't understand why people rave about it. My personal belief is that RFAD goes down much better in the US and that the scores it gets here on IMDb are a reflection of the fact that most of the people who frequent this website are Americans. To a degree, I feel that the marks it has received are due to the US attitude to hard drugs and addiction.
As a European, I didn't find anything brutal or shocking about RFAD. The earlier "Trainspotting" was THE movie about drug addiction and it portrayed a much more realistic attitude to addiction. It's a case of "Seen it all before only better". Realism was a big problem. Really, for heroin junkies, the guys and girls in this movie didn't have a hair out of place. Clean finger nails, tidy hair, clean clothes, dammit, they looked better than most of the people I know! Some of the decisions they made were really "out there" (even for junkies) and the plot left a lot to be desired (what little there was of it). There were also many instances where the plot veered off into the realms of being illogical - things happened to characters that just wouldn't have happened in real life - no matter how whacked out on drugs they were. One could counter that the movie's strength was that it was a bleak portrayal using extremes as a way of gaining impact but bleakness doesn't make it a classic and extremes still have to be put into a context where they don't overwhelm logic.
And my other beef? RFAD seems to be a hybrid of Trainspotting and Snatch/Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (again, people rave about the camera-work and music in RFAD, but again, it's something we've already seen done far better in European film long before).
Take away the originality of the camera-work and score, take away the originality of the "Addiction Story" and you're not really left with anything else but a mediocre movie.
I've read elsewhere people defending RFAD, saying that the book clarifies this or the book clarifies that and that criticising the movie whilst being unaware of the book's contents means that any negative view is unjustified. But come on people!! I went to see a movie. I didn't want to read the book. The movie really should tell me everything I want to know and if I have to read the book to have a better understanding, that means that the movie has failed.
Believe me, I tried to like RFAD. I looked at the IMDb score and thought, "It's got to be great". Then, when I discovered that it really wasn't that good, I thought maybe the problem was with me. But on analysis - no. No punch. No realism. No meat. No originality.
Finally, I'd just like to add, that I didn't relate to any of the characters - they were all annoying idiots. The only one who could elicit any sympathy at all was Wayan's character, Tyrone (although again, his final predicament didn't follow logic). I always find it very hard to like any movie where all the characters grind on my nerves. I'm not talking about just disliking characters - that could be the point of the plot and negative emotions could be the director's intentions, but in this case, they were just plain aggravating and I'd be pretty sure that was never the intended result. Personally, I couldn't have cared less what happened to them and to tell the absolute truth, I actually hoped from an early stage that something bad would happen to at least one of them and that kind of tramples over everything that the movie probably tried to be.
Sorry. For all the raving RFAD is just an average movie.