(Review originally written at 19 August 2004)
This movie promised to be a lot but overall it only disappointed me. This movie promised to be emotional, shocking, confronting, nightmare giving...the greatest anti-drugs movie ever made! It wasn't any of it.
There are several problems I had with this movie. The first and biggest was the style. Now, I love Tim Burton movies and I'm a Brian De Palma fan, so normally I like unusual and unique styles, however the visual style of "Requiem for a Dream" just didn't do it for me. In my opinion it also didn't do any good to the movie and the story. It made some of the emotional scene's even almost look comical like. I know the style was meant to give the movie a 'trippy' kind of feeling but if you truly want to have a 'trippy' movie experience watch "Natural Born Killers" instead.
I don't know but the movie also gave me the feeling that the cast and crew didn't really did much if any research on drugs and the effects. They could have had at least spoke to some (ex)-junkies or spend 10 minutes in a room with Courtney Love or sit down all together in an Amsterdam coffeeshop for a day. I don't really know why but the movie didn't gave me the feeling at all that they did any of this. Maybe if they had done this they also wouldn't have had miss cast Jennifer Connelly. I like her as an actress but she is far to pretty and 'normal' like to play a convincing drugs addict.
The story was also quite standard and pretty far fetched. I mean, if you're a drugs user this is about the extreme that could happen (but not the worst). I Only really liked the Ellen Burstyn story line. Mainly because Ellen Burstyn self acts wonderful and her character is the only one that doesn't start as an addict and is the most believable and emotionally involving one.
That brings me to another I had with the movie. I couldn't feel for the characters.
I make it sound like this is an horrible movie which I totally hate. But however this is not the case. There are enough positive things to say about this movie. Such as the hectic ending, that really made up a lot for me and nice little musical score by Clint Mansell was also good. I still have respect for this movie and what it tries to be but for me it overall left simply just a disappointing impression.
A bad movie? No! Over-hyped? Yes!
7/10
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