ACID HOUSE, THE

SYNOPSIS:
The Acid House is a collection of three short stories. ‘The Granton Star Cause,’ covers a very, very bad day in the life of Boab Coyle (Stephen McCole); ‘A Soft Touch’ revolves around Johnny (Kevin McKidd), who marries the very pregnant Catriona (Michelle Gomez), who, almost as soon as the baby is born, starts making it with psychopathic neighbour, Larry (Gary McCormack); In ‘The Acid House’, Coco Bryce (Ewen Bremner), a speed-crazed madman, desperately fears commitment to his relationship with Kirsty (Arlene Cockburn). Meanwhile, Rory (Martin Clunes) and his wife, Jenny (Jemma Redgrave), are about to have their first child. Suddenly, in a burst of lightning, the baby and an utterly stoned Coco somehow exchange personalities, much to the dismay of all.

"Trainspotting has a lot to answer for. Its wild, irreverent style and its delving into Glasgow working-class society, was successful because of the film’s inventive style and colourful characters. No such luck in this utterly appalling, ineptly made slice of cinematic bile. How on earth this film ever got off the ground is unfathomable, but it single-handedly has managed to turn back British cinema a decade. On a purely technical level, under the guidance of amateur director Paul McGuigan, the film is a mess. This is little more than three in-your-face clumsily crafted short films whose sole purpose is to offend those viewers with enough 'bollocks' to suffer through this drug-induced piece of nonsense. The first segment, in a footballer-turned-fly spots his deranged parents having sex is singularly one of cinema's most deranged moments. Now this critic is not a puritan, but that sex scene is simply confrontationist and exploitative. One imagines, that as long as screenwriters know how to spell and say 'fuck’, then they must be literary artists. There's more excessive profanity in this film than all of Eddie Murphy's concert tours put together, and used so blatantly, that their repetition becomes annoying and facile. The Acid House is completely in-your-face viciousness, done so badly and with little purpose or imagination, that its effect is more numbing than entertaining. It may have been designed to shock; what it succeeds in doing is alienating the audience. This could well be the worst and most offensive film of the year, if not the decade."
Paul Fischer