Requiem for a Nightmare

Rating: 6/10 (12 September 2009)

I was in the mood for a real, honest "feel-good" movie and was not disappointed in 'Requiem for a Dream.' There's heartwarming drama, true family ties, love, comedy and all around wholesome to be found in this uplifting tale.
Of course, I'm just kidding. Despite one character taking uppers, this serves up the downers, in truckloads.
Four characters in various degrees of drug usage and stages of narcotics spiral out of control, and yet, I felt the movie serves up the extreme consequences only a few go through. Granted, I am not a drug user, nor do I associate people that live this kind of existence, so what do I know? It just seemed to me, in a very short time, less than a year, these people went from (sort-of) real world to near death or worse.
The movie begins with a son scaring his mother by removing her TV. My first reaction was he was trying to help her from her television addiction. On the contrary, it was to sell it for the x amount of times in order to score drugs with his friend. They, with the addition of the son's girlfriend come up with a "surefire" way to make it big and out of the life-path they've set themselves on. Hmmm, without giving anything away, I wonder if their slam-dunk plan will work. Meanwhile, Mom gets her dream come true: guest starring on the one and only show on TV (really? There was never anything else on?) To prepare, she inadvertently gets hooked on uppers her careless doctor prescribes. Even her son tells her "Say no to drugs."
Overall, I liked the movie that doesn't just also tell the audience to avoid drugs, but shows why in very original and unique ways. Great performances, especially Burstyn (Mom.)
Unfortunately, the reason I didn't give it a higher rating was though the story was predictable, the results seemed somehow sped up. Also, the music, which was sometimes good, most times was so overbearing/such a distraction to what was going on or the dialogue spoken. And finally, as unrealistic (again, I'm not a druggie, so I'm mostly assuming) as their lives seemed to turn out, they made the rest of the world crazy, too. Blind doctors, electric shock treatments to cure prescription woos and a station that runs a "game show/self-help" program 24 hours a day, 7 days a week marathon on 3 simple principles of "being a winner." I know those exist, but mercifully, they're only usually in 30 minute 3AM time slots.