The Acid House (1999)

Very Cool!!!

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

I love this ridiculous movie. It's so much fun and the acting is first class! Amazing! The Scottish accents are pretty strong, however I can understand the dialogue quite clearly because I'm English and they are speaking English, but in a local style. For those who live outside the UK, knowing how to "turn your ear" to Scotch English would be an unusual talent.Luckily, there are subtitles for English speakers who are not British. Unfortunately, these subtitles are off key, off kilter - the characters are not REALLY saying those things in that way... They certainly weren't done by a Scottish nor an English person... So, beware of the subtitles, they are a bit on the clueless side! The characters are great! They totally do your head in! LOL! The situations just make you feel filthy, depraved and highly amused. The lovely wedding, for example, is straight out of a Disney romance - not! The movie is full of quotable lines that when expressed in front of people who have seen the movie, they start nodding and laughing. Coco Bryce's father's request for cigarettes was used by my friend as a greeting to his friends for a while! He's a GP, by the way (a doctor).I just love this movie. When I lose it, I always replace it. I adore brilliant movies like Star Wars, Jaws, Alien, Forrest Gump etc etc... But a favourite hobby of mine is to make new acquaintances watch THIS movie LOL! A Classic! 8oD PS Read the graffiti on the walls LOL!

Wow, those accents. I did catch the occasional f- and c-words but most of the rest was like a foreign language I don't speak. "The Acid House" is a reminder of that short period of time when drunk, violent, sexually perverted and/or drug-addicted Scotsmen were the hippest thing in cinema. "Trainspotting" had established that kind of hipness and "The Acid House" tried to cash in on that success by bringing some lesser short stories by Irvine Welsh to the big screen. Well, "The Acid House" doesn't come close to "Trainspotting". It's silly stupid in its best moments and incredibly annoying in its worst. The stories are neither very original, nor are they very entertaining and the editing already seems hopelessly dated (after all almost ten years have passed since 1998). In the end "The Acid House" serves as little more than a reminder why it sucked growing up in the late 90's with rave music and bad drugs.

This is really one of the worst movies i have seen in a while. It's not funny at all. It simply portrays a lower class Northern British setting. I find it a very sad film at parts, at others cuts are where they shouldn't be. One thing that really annoyed me was the close ups of pointless objects it really slowed down the pace of the movie. I only made it through the movie because i fast forwarded certain sequences towards the end.This movie completely loses the attention of the audience. It's main problem is that it makes multiple reasons for one action, which in turn tends to weaken that action. However if there is one reason for one action it makes it more passionate. All in all this movie is all over the place. I didn't learn enough about the characters to care about them because of the shifting plot lines and stories where as i would have maybe enjoyed exploring the life of one character.For example at the beginning when the guy meets God in the bar, God seems like a cool guy. The movie could've elaborated on that moment and I think it would've been a lot funnier.Anyway, enough if's. Watch it if you want, but I'm warning you this film is crap. I respect the makers for trying to pull it off with such a low budget but they could've done a much better job. I guess it all lies in the camera movement and editing, the acting was decent. But then again, that's just my opinion.

As I review more and more films they are slowly becoming more and more difficult to review. Why? There are just some films out there that are this solid mix of great and average that it is difficult to give a definitive answer. Did I like it or didn't I? The lines are getting more and more fuzzy as the films continue to pour on. The only ones that I do not have trouble with are the uncreative lacklusters that Hollywood is notorious for releasing. Thankfully, that is not the case with The Acid House. Considered by some to be Trainspotting 2, I think that in actuality it is below Trainspotting. While Trainspotting had a definite plot and characters, this one is simply random stories that have come together in the end. There is no doubt in my mind that Irvine Welch's stories are superb. The styles in which these are portrayed and carried out are very imaginative and realistic (in a surreal sort of way) which really kept my attention. What they do lack is structure. That is why I have added this collection of stories to my list of books that I would like to own, but not the film. I cannot read the other stories that Irvine Welch has imagined for his home country, sadly, I am not interested in seeing anymore short stories theatrically released. Don't get me wrong. This was my type of film. It was graphic, yet poignant, subtle yet powerful, and very brilliantly written with some interesting messages about life, it was just that I think it was too much for the director to handle. This was director Paul McGuigan's first film, and you could tell that he was just a little rough around the edges. He has transformed into a brilliant director since this film, but it just seems like this first film was pushed and again, rough around the edges. For example, the child in the final story eerily resembled Chucky from the Child's Play films. This cheap way of creating this character thoroughly distracted me from the story, but McGuigan was able to redeem himself with the final scene of this film when CoCo comes back to his body. This was the type of 'give and take' that you had to accept with this film. While there were some horrible scenes, there were equally amazing scenes. I almost felt that I was watching a rough-cut of a Guy Ritchie film. There were just scenes that stood out that seemed like they were his classic moments.I enjoyed the way these stories all came together. I loved the second story the most because it was so brilliantly depressing that you just couldn't help but find a piece of you somewhere in there. The first story was decent, but a bit too grotesque for my liking, while the third was surreally comical. I loved the subtitles (that were random throughout my version of the film) that allowed me to fully understand what these characters were saying. It was a good film. Not quite the potential that Trainspotting had, but still a decent film. I cannot wait to read the book and see what I missed from watching this first.Overall, fun to watch the first time, but a continuous viewing will not be necessary.Grade: *** out of *****