(2002)

review by:

10-10-03

Written by: Craig Machen Directed by: Stephen Kay Starring: Nick Stahl, Summer Phoenix, Aaron Paul

A good student, her concerned boyfriend, and the "bad boy" all get addicted to heroin. Grab a Kleenex. Wasted is an MTV movie based on a true story, and it shows. The situations are very believable and the people are pretty real. However, watching three actors play soulless, uninteresting people gets old very fast. Wasted goes for realism, and achieves it to the point that the movie's sleep-inducing. Remember when you were 12 and you stole one of your mom's Duran Duran tapes so you could record an hour and a half of KROQ? Well, apparently that's the method of choice for scoring this movie. P.O.D. and heroin...not the most appropriate mix. And if the music isn't prepubescent enough, Wasted is shot like a "very special episode" of Days of Our Lives (which I watched for all of one week when I was 12). In those rare moments when the camera actually pulls back from a close-up, it's usually to show an exterior shot of the school or house. And don't forget the oh-so-artsy "Damn, I'm high" scenes, like the one in which Aaron Paul laughs at his dead friend. SPOILER: You leave this movie with no particular lessons learned, probably because the only living main character doesn't either. Her ending monologue is basically, "Well, it sucks for them that they died, especially my boyfriend who tried it because of me. But at least I'm still alive because I'm luckier than them. Hey, there's a swing set!" Wasted isn't a horrible movie, it's just a bit boring and soulless. Although more realistic than that other depressing heroin movie, it's so realistic that I just don't care.

AKA: Requium for My Consciousness

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