Addicted To Her Love (2009/aka Love
Is The Drug/E1 DVD)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: C+ Film: C+
I was
interest in Elliott Lester’s Addicted To Her Love (2009, originally
titled Love Is The Drug in its 2006
release) when I saw Writer Wesley Strick’s name connected to the script as
co-writer. The man behind the scripts of
films that worked (Wolf, True Believer), were commercial hits
(Scorsese’s remake of Cape Fear) and
some disappointments (The Saint
(1997) revival that was not, Final
Analysis) so what would an independently produced work be like? Now that I caught up to it, not bad, but too
short.
Jonah
(John Patrick Amedori) works at a pharmacy and is a good guy who is also a
loner of sorts. He falls for Sarah
(Lizzy Caplan of Mean Girls) and
that puts him in the vicinity of her friends who are not always playing with
the full deck. This includes Lucas (D.J.
Cotrona) who can be bullying and would like Jonah to steal some drugs from his
workplace for their use. This backfires
quickly and brings out the worst in all involved, then things get bizarre.
Though
the course is different than I expected, it still did not pay off with too
abrupt an ending and many things left hanging, whether one would want closure
in the end or not. The actors are very
good, including Daryl Hannah as Jonah’s mother and Jenny Wade (Red Eye) as best girlfriend Erin. At least it is an ambitious work and that is
reason enough for the curious to give it a look.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image can have motion blur and be soft,
looking more like an HD shoot than a bad Digital; Internegative from film, but
it can be distracting despite some good shots and editing. The shaky camera work worked against this,
however. The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix stretches
out what as likely a somewhat stereophonic mix, though this was a Dolby Digital
theatrical release. Sound is recorded
decently, but the soundfield is far from strong. Extras include a Photo Gallery, behind the
scenes featurette and feature-length audio commentary by Lester and Amedori.
- Nicholas Sheffo
