Hallucinogenic drug odysseys tend to make for awful, self-indulgent films, but Alison Mclean’s film of Dennis Johnson’s book is one of the few that maintain narrative control; Billy Crudup stars at FH, whose passion for narcotics leads him on a picaresque journey in the early seventies. Michael Shannon, Dennis Hopper, Holly Hunter, Will Patton and Samantha Morton are amongst the characters FH meets, with the honours stolen by Jack Black as a hospital attendant whose too keen of the temptations of the medicine cabinet. Mclean seems to have been toiling in television since making this film, but it’s a striking, original, frequently beautiful and genuinely mature film about growing up that entertains for every moment of its running time.
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