This movie, also known as Love Is the Drug, takes about an hour to get to its point and goes downhill from there. That first hour, though, is a winning rumination on wasted youth and the mutable internal dynamics of a teenage cluster. The supposedly shocking conclusion jams in a whole lot of exposition to justify itself, which is an admission of failure from the get go, and the whole thing is muddied by the opaque nature of the main character. If you're interesting in watching a story about that time in everyone's life when your understanding of the world doesn't extend beyond the tip of your genitals or the edge or your self-loathing, you could do a lot worse than this flick.
Jonah (John Patrick Amedori) is a teenage kid from a middle class family attending a private school. We're meant to take Jonah as a non-entity in school because he's shy and sports an unfortunate hair helmet, but the film doesn't define him in any way beyond that. A classroom essay brings Jonah to the attention of Sara (Lizzy Caplan) and she brings him into her circle of rich friends. There's dickish Lucas (D.J. Cotrona), insecure boyfriend Troy (Jonathon Trent) and bitch-on-wheels Erin (Jenny Wade). The others only warm up to the sheepish Jonah when he starts using his job at a pharmacy to score them drugs, but Sara takes a puppy dog interest in him. Jonah's response is to practically drool with lust every time he's around Sara, but she and Troy don't seem to notice.
The interaction between these 5 characters make up most of the 1st hour of Addicted to Her Love/Love Is the Drug and besides being well acted and well shot, there are two entertaining elements to it. The way these 4 wealthy brats allow Jonah to incorporate himself into their clique neatly flies in the face of the more rigid depiction of high school friendships in film. It doesn't deny the existence of teenage hierarchies but presents them as more fluid constructs, which is almost certainly a more realistic take on the subject. For example, there's a scene where Lucas and Erin warn Jonah to give up on his infatuation with Sara. Now, because Jonah is the designated crap-eater of their group, Lucas and Erin do it in a mean and belittling way. That they would bother at all, however, demonstrates a basic human concern for Jonah and a desire to see him not do anything stupid. That sort of subtle depth to these kids and their behavior makes the 1st hour of this movie fairly enjoyable.
Then one member of Sara's group dies and the last half hour or so is just about the opposite of subtle. A bunch of painfully obvious stuff is crammed in, leading to one character having to explain things about himself to other characters, which is really just a pretense for explaining those things to the audience. If you stopped the movie before the death, you could then take the story in 4 or 5 other directions that would be just as logical and believable as where it actually went. The last third of Addicted to Her Love/Love Is the Drug isn't atrocious, but the lack of coherent build up to it in the first two-thirds is the reason why things both become so obvious and intrusive expository dialog is needed.
Director Elliott Lester does employ that constantly moving, ADHD style of camera work. It's not as annoying as usual because it does fit the scattered nature of these teens and their lives. When the story becomes more simple and direct in the last half hour, though, the shaky-cam business becomes a lot more noticeable and tiresome. The use of music here is also particularly aggravating. You know how you watch a movie and the end credits will list all the songs that played during it and you'll realize you don't necessarily remember those songs? That's because the music was unobtrusively woven into the story and became part of it. The music here is too often like someone sticking a bottle rocket up your ass and lighting the fuse. The impulse to litter movies with these music video type montages is one of the banes of modern filmmaking. Oh, and director Lester uses an almost laughable number of fade-to-black transitions between scenes. That it's not very common doesn't make fade-to-black an invalid technique but when you use it over and over again with no discernible purpose, it becomes disruptive and that's contrary to its function.
If it had ended better, Addicted to Her Love/Love Is the Drug would have been a good flick. Instead, it's one of those toss up pictures. You may like it or you may not, but it's worth giving it a shot.
Jonah (John Patrick Amedori) is a teenage kid from a middle class family attending a private school. We're meant to take Jonah as a non-entity in school because he's shy and sports an unfortunate hair helmet, but the film doesn't define him in any way beyond that. A classroom essay brings Jonah to the attention of Sara (Lizzy Caplan) and she brings him into her circle of rich friends. There's dickish Lucas (D.J. Cotrona), insecure boyfriend Troy (Jonathon Trent) and bitch-on-wheels Erin (Jenny Wade). The others only warm up to the sheepish Jonah when he starts using his job at a pharmacy to score them drugs, but Sara takes a puppy dog interest in him. Jonah's response is to practically drool with lust every time he's around Sara, but she and Troy don't seem to notice.
The interaction between these 5 characters make up most of the 1st hour of Addicted to Her Love/Love Is the Drug and besides being well acted and well shot, there are two entertaining elements to it. The way these 4 wealthy brats allow Jonah to incorporate himself into their clique neatly flies in the face of the more rigid depiction of high school friendships in film. It doesn't deny the existence of teenage hierarchies but presents them as more fluid constructs, which is almost certainly a more realistic take on the subject. For example, there's a scene where Lucas and Erin warn Jonah to give up on his infatuation with Sara. Now, because Jonah is the designated crap-eater of their group, Lucas and Erin do it in a mean and belittling way. That they would bother at all, however, demonstrates a basic human concern for Jonah and a desire to see him not do anything stupid. That sort of subtle depth to these kids and their behavior makes the 1st hour of this movie fairly enjoyable.
Then one member of Sara's group dies and the last half hour or so is just about the opposite of subtle. A bunch of painfully obvious stuff is crammed in, leading to one character having to explain things about himself to other characters, which is really just a pretense for explaining those things to the audience. If you stopped the movie before the death, you could then take the story in 4 or 5 other directions that would be just as logical and believable as where it actually went. The last third of Addicted to Her Love/Love Is the Drug isn't atrocious, but the lack of coherent build up to it in the first two-thirds is the reason why things both become so obvious and intrusive expository dialog is needed.
Director Elliott Lester does employ that constantly moving, ADHD style of camera work. It's not as annoying as usual because it does fit the scattered nature of these teens and their lives. When the story becomes more simple and direct in the last half hour, though, the shaky-cam business becomes a lot more noticeable and tiresome. The use of music here is also particularly aggravating. You know how you watch a movie and the end credits will list all the songs that played during it and you'll realize you don't necessarily remember those songs? That's because the music was unobtrusively woven into the story and became part of it. The music here is too often like someone sticking a bottle rocket up your ass and lighting the fuse. The impulse to litter movies with these music video type montages is one of the banes of modern filmmaking. Oh, and director Lester uses an almost laughable number of fade-to-black transitions between scenes. That it's not very common doesn't make fade-to-black an invalid technique but when you use it over and over again with no discernible purpose, it becomes disruptive and that's contrary to its function.
If it had ended better, Addicted to Her Love/Love Is the Drug would have been a good flick. Instead, it's one of those toss up pictures. You may like it or you may not, but it's worth giving it a shot.