Ecstasy (2012)

Waste of time

That was an excellent one.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Yep, not Ecstasy... but Irvine Welsh's Ecstasy. He must be so proud to have his name associated with this film. I suggest he has his head tested.There is hardly anything worse than films about 'tough guys' who get all 'gooey' by the end. Here, our lead, to put it bluntly, is a pill-popping moron. He deals in drugs, probably ruining hundreds of lives in the process... but he spends most of it on his infirm father.. so that's alright then. He also owes thousands to a drug lord, who if this film was smarter would recognise him as the hilarious, over-the-top caricature he is. Sadly though, it doesn't and attempts to make his comical behaviour scary... to deadening effect.Just look at those numpties on the dancefloor, mouths agape and jumping up and down with their head rocking. Is this what is classified as 'cool' these days? If so, I'm so glad I'm a stay at home, pipe and slippers kinda guy. And listen to the things they say... is any of it enlightening? Stirring? Thought-provoking in any way? Nope... this is a collection of the most boring, shapeless misanthropes I've seen in many a motion picture. I thought drugs, apart from making you feel good (temporarily at least), also made you the life and the soul of the party.Here, it seems to have the reverse effect, these people are tedious in the extreme with clear heads, and suicidally dull when off their heads. It all adds up to the filmic equivalent of spending the evening at a dinner party with a bunch of trained monkeys. Throwing poo at each other. The final insult is the poster, which is a direct reference (or rip-off) to the one for Trainspotting. Now I thought that movie was a tad overrated, but comparing THIS to it is breathtakingly cheeky.Oh, I forgot... the author of both is one Irvine Welsh. Oh well, he's only got himself to blame then... 1/10

This is a truly dreadful film of what was a good book. Poorly acted with some sort of attempt at a Trainspotting style. No characters are developed in any way and the plot is almost non-existent. The accents?? It seems the film is actually Canadian which is not that surprising as most of the accents are some weird hybrid of about three different places. (With the exception of the two lead males.) The sets look like something from a seventies soap opera and any realistic atmosphere (bar and restaurants with no-one else in them) is completely lacking. As for the drug/rave thing-has anyone involved with the film ever even been to a nightclub never mind a rave. The reviews at the top are clearly from family and friends and why Irvine has put his name to such an embarrassing attempt at a film is very puzzling. One of the top five worst films I have seen.

This movie falls so far from it's intended objectives that I almost wonder if it isn't some sort of multi-layered social joke that the director is playing on his audience. The entire film from start to finish feels as if a naive & innocent thirteen year old boy wrote and directed this embarrassing excuse for a motion picture film to impress his older brother who does drugs. Other than the stylishly ripped-off poster design, there is... LITERALLY.... nothing about this film that doesn't make you constantly cringe out of embarrassment for all involved.The first batch of reviews that give this movie a 10/10 MUST BE FAKE. There is no way that a person coherent enough to read and write English could possibly view this film as a "Must see film," or "Great Cast, Great Story," or my personal favorite: "The Definitive Film about Ecstasy and Clubbing Culture."Netflix now has this film, and, just like everyone else, was drawn to it out of love for Trainspotting. After quickly looking up the IMDb/Rotten Tomatoes ratings for the film (IMDB=4.7/10, and Rotten Tomatoes has it hovering around a 14%/100) I knew I probably wouldn't get my mind blown, but I wasn't expecting a film this truly awful.From the first scene which desperately tries to capitalize on the visual aesthetic of Trainspotting, the entire movie becomes an inconsistent mess of AWFUL acting, childish dialogue, flat and borderline nonexistent narrative, and of course there's the music. This film, adapted from one of the best counter-culture authors of the 20th century, had ALL THE WORK DONE FOR IT. All they had to do was properly rip off Danny Boyle's Trainspotting, apply it to this novel, and they would have at least an AVERAGE film. The entire premise revolves around emotionally exposing the 90's underground rave/club culture, and the entire soundtrack consists of, from what I can tell, the same four bars of the most generic "club beat" I've ever heard, and it only plays in the background of these small scale pathetic "rave" sequences where it becomes obvious that the scene consists of less than 20 extras generically moving in a basement while some cheap strobe lights try to mask the films budget and attempt to make it look like a pulsing, sweating, out-of- mind ecstasy club.So my advice to you is, watch it, but only if you have a morbid curiosity to see in real-time what it feels like to watch the careers of probably everyone involved get quickly erased out of history. I can't imagine trusting director, cinematographer (if you can call him that), or ANY of the actors or writers to coherently create a low-expectation soap opera episode, much less another film. I suppose I'm glad that it was made, so people know for certain how terrible all parties involved are at their respective craft.Embarrassing. I just spent ten minutes writing this to save you the pain of this film destroying what little expectations you might have from it.

Even if no one tells you, that the novel this is based on is by the same author who wrote "Trainspotting", you'd get that after a couple of minutes for sure. It's too early to really tell, but Ewan McGregor this ain't. Still the central performance is really good and you get the ever beautiful K. Kreuk.Story-wise you shouldn't expect much. Very predictable and some cliché scenes, with a bad guy who relishes in his role, but almost gets underplayed by the characters inabilities. Our main character is as mostly in this cases one of his own worst enemies. Decent little thriller that has all the right ingredients, but never fully takes off