I was severely disappointed by the fact this was dumped onto VOD like last week's salami, because I was actually fairly intrigued by this film. If you don't know, A Million Little Pieces was a 2003 novel by James Frey, ostensibly about his extensive drug use and experience in rehab. The book would garner critical acclaim and financial success, especially after Oprah put the book onto her Book Club list in 2005, and had Frey on as a guest. It then emerged from investigations that he had fabricated siginficant parts of the book, including his arrest records and involvement in several incidents described. His subsequent appearance on Oprah saw her eviscerate him on air, his "memoir" was reclassified as fiction, and Frey himself would become a punchline for defrauding people, and would fade into obscurity (popping up only to make a YA slave factory and apparently came up with the initial concept for Queen and Slim). Now, I myself don't remember any of this, because I was 8, but the story has intrigued me for a while. The idea of a fake memoir, someone embellishing or fabricating their own life and selling it successfully is an intriguing notion. I feel that it taps into so many intriguing aspects of memory, fiction vs. fact, people's perceptions of real and fake. In this era of misinformation and fake news running rampant across the internet with little rebuttal, telling the story of a man who made up a memoir and successfully pitched it to the American public might had some relevance and might've been a biting look into media hype and how mistruths can spread. Unfortunately, director Sam Taylor-Johnson and her husband and star of the film, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, decided to take the memoir as it was, and ignore all this interesting material for the most mundane telling of this story.
Based on James Frey's "memoirs" of the same name, the story follows Frey (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) as he is forced to go into rehab in Minneapolis by his brother Bob (Charlie Hunnam, doing this horrible what I think is supposed to be a Boston accent) after an incident where . While he is initially reserved and in denial of his extensive drug and alcohol abuse (even as he deals with no drinks or even anesthesia) , through the acts of people like Leonard (Billy Bob Thorton), Miles Davis (not that one, he plays a clarinet) (Charles Parnell), Joanne (Juliette Lewis), and Lilly (Odessa Young), he learns to overcome his struggle, and yadda, yadda, yadda, you know the rest.
There are parts of this movie that are actually quite well done. There's some very good shots down that are surprisingly evocative, especially a parallel shot at the beginning and end. Billy Bob Thorton and Charles Parnell are also very good for the stock roles they end up giving. Thorton in particular has some great emotional moments that are really gripping.
First and foremost, Aaron Taylor-Johnson is awful in this. Just horrible. His line delivery is muddled and incoherent, his physicality seems distractingly unnatural, and during the vaunted scenes of drug use, this physicality really doesn't work with stumbling and bumbling anywhere. I can tell he's trying to capture the angst and agony going through this character as he tries to recover, but it really, really doesn't work to convey that. James Frey comes off a cypher wandering through life. What doesn't help is that the film itself is mostly a generic, middle-of -the-road story of addiction, that largely goes through the motions stipulated by other works of fiction (and yes, I do consider the "memoir" fiction), done better in other films. Other than those shots I mentioned, it's filmed generically, it's written generically with bland speeches about overcoming, and mostly, it's just... generic. Not especially good, not especially bad, just .... there. When compared to films like Beautiful Boy (based on an actual true story) or Ben is Back, both from last year, this film, with its after-school preachiness and ridiculous scenes, comes off really dated and absurd. Which might make it entertaining if it weren't so dull. I completely zoned out of large parts of this film because it was so monotonous and unengaging, with so many speeches about overcoming and not a lot of actual overcoming. Finally, and this is a real life criticism, but that the fact the memoir was a proven fraud, casts a shadow over this film. They acknowledge it briefly with a quote at the beginning, but like I said in the intro, instead of treating it like the story of a man who tricked millions of people, we instead get the full, largely fabricated account of the fake memoir, by extension endorsing it. If it had actually happened, a lot of the earlier flaws might've been forgiven, but this is all made-up and the fact that filmmakers don't seem to want to acknowledge it really undercuts the power of the film and any help it may give to other addicts.
I read a bunch of interviews with Sam and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and they seem very sincere in bringing this to the screen. The director, in particular, talked about people she had known who had struggled with addiction as a reason to make the film. I appreciate the reasons they had to go through with this project in spite of the controversy and years of production hell, but honestly, it's really hard not to think of it and the potentially more interesting story that might've been told around this book. At the end of the day, though, this was just mediocre. The fact of its very existence is probably much more interesting and thought-provoking than the film itself. It's not even bad in a particularly interesting way. It's bad in dullest manner. If you're interested, read up on the real story and especially The Smoking Gun's investigation into the inaccuracies and suspicious elements of the book, and see it with that mind. Otherwise, I can't quite think of a reason to see it.
Based on James Frey's "memoirs" of the same name, the story follows Frey (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) as he is forced to go into rehab in Minneapolis by his brother Bob (Charlie Hunnam, doing this horrible what I think is supposed to be a Boston accent) after an incident where . While he is initially reserved and in denial of his extensive drug and alcohol abuse (even as he deals with no drinks or even anesthesia) , through the acts of people like Leonard (Billy Bob Thorton), Miles Davis (not that one, he plays a clarinet) (Charles Parnell), Joanne (Juliette Lewis), and Lilly (Odessa Young), he learns to overcome his struggle, and yadda, yadda, yadda, you know the rest.
There are parts of this movie that are actually quite well done. There's some very good shots down that are surprisingly evocative, especially a parallel shot at the beginning and end. Billy Bob Thorton and Charles Parnell are also very good for the stock roles they end up giving. Thorton in particular has some great emotional moments that are really gripping.
First and foremost, Aaron Taylor-Johnson is awful in this. Just horrible. His line delivery is muddled and incoherent, his physicality seems distractingly unnatural, and during the vaunted scenes of drug use, this physicality really doesn't work with stumbling and bumbling anywhere. I can tell he's trying to capture the angst and agony going through this character as he tries to recover, but it really, really doesn't work to convey that. James Frey comes off a cypher wandering through life. What doesn't help is that the film itself is mostly a generic, middle-of -the-road story of addiction, that largely goes through the motions stipulated by other works of fiction (and yes, I do consider the "memoir" fiction), done better in other films. Other than those shots I mentioned, it's filmed generically, it's written generically with bland speeches about overcoming, and mostly, it's just... generic. Not especially good, not especially bad, just .... there. When compared to films like Beautiful Boy (based on an actual true story) or Ben is Back, both from last year, this film, with its after-school preachiness and ridiculous scenes, comes off really dated and absurd. Which might make it entertaining if it weren't so dull. I completely zoned out of large parts of this film because it was so monotonous and unengaging, with so many speeches about overcoming and not a lot of actual overcoming. Finally, and this is a real life criticism, but that the fact the memoir was a proven fraud, casts a shadow over this film. They acknowledge it briefly with a quote at the beginning, but like I said in the intro, instead of treating it like the story of a man who tricked millions of people, we instead get the full, largely fabricated account of the fake memoir, by extension endorsing it. If it had actually happened, a lot of the earlier flaws might've been forgiven, but this is all made-up and the fact that filmmakers don't seem to want to acknowledge it really undercuts the power of the film and any help it may give to other addicts.
I read a bunch of interviews with Sam and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and they seem very sincere in bringing this to the screen. The director, in particular, talked about people she had known who had struggled with addiction as a reason to make the film. I appreciate the reasons they had to go through with this project in spite of the controversy and years of production hell, but honestly, it's really hard not to think of it and the potentially more interesting story that might've been told around this book. At the end of the day, though, this was just mediocre. The fact of its very existence is probably much more interesting and thought-provoking than the film itself. It's not even bad in a particularly interesting way. It's bad in dullest manner. If you're interested, read up on the real story and especially The Smoking Gun's investigation into the inaccuracies and suspicious elements of the book, and see it with that mind. Otherwise, I can't quite think of a reason to see it.
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