Read the book. If you like this movie, do yourself that favor.

Rating: 6/10 (18 May 2007)

I usually hate it when people tell me, "The book was better than the movie." Of course it was! Two hour of film cannot possibly hold the content of hundreds of pages of text. I know, you know, we all know. However, if there is one movie that I cannot stress the old trite adage on enough it is "Trainspotting." My friends, my brother, my cousins, people I didn't even know kept telling me over and over that I NEEDED to see "Trainspotting." My life was incomplete without watching the movie. Even after I told them that I've already read the book, they still told me to forget the book and that the movie was probably better. So, I buckled. I saw it...and quite frankly I'm glad that I read it first because the movie was kinda weak. The movie bare-boned the plot, left out some of the best scenes in the book (Rents did more than just dive into a toilet in a bathroom), left a couple of pretty interesting characters out completely, and SICK BOY SHOT THE DOG!! The directing and the acting were both very good, but the script seemed to be fueled solely on heroin. The whole movie revolved around heroin, and the book didn't. Heroin was very important to the story, obviously, but that wasn't it. The book actually dealt with the ideas presented by Rents in the all-too-famous opening lines. I felt the movie worked under the assumption that drug-culture IS anti-culture. It's not. The movie irked me in the way that hippies irk me, you're not sticking it to the man by doing drugs. Anyway, the movie's decent, but hear my words...IF THIS IS ONE OF YOUR FAVORITE MOVIES, TAKE THE TIME TO READ IRVINE WELSH'S NOVEL OF THE SAME NAME. YOU WILL NOT REGRET IT!!