I write this review from the viewpoint of someone who is in recovery from sex addiction. I have attended 12-Step, anonymous "S" meetings (SLAA, SAA, SA, etc) for 23 years. In that time I have seen it all, so I can say from experience that "Thanks for Sharing" tells it like it is for those of us who struggle with sex addiction in recovery.
The movie itself follows multiple addicts whose recovery stories weave around each other. There are no plot twists, just a series of seemingly random, real life events and situations which plague addicts, and how addicts in recovery deal with them, sometimes successfully and sometimes not, but always making progress and learning how to live life.
The movie depicts a surprisingly complete spectrum of victories, failures, and facts of recovery: meetings, sponsorship, relapses into addiction, a "crash", a "crash and burn", job loses, near relapses, just-in-time phone calls, phone calls which went unanswered at critical times, suspicious girlfriends, wary wives, male addicts, female addicts, addict parents having to confront the affects of their addiction on their own children, addicts having to deal with their abusive parents, starting a healthy relationship with another addict in recovery or with a non-addict, the confusion caused by sex after long abstinence from sex, multiple addictions, and, above all, a message of hope and freedom. It's all there, and it's there in a surprisingly compact story.
The movie importantly points out a critical difference between sex addiction and substance abuse, and that is that substance abusers do not have their "drug of choice" manufactured within their own bodies, and that recovery from sex addiction is not about abstaining from sex forever but is about getting into a healthy relationship with sex.
"Thanks for Sharing" evoked strong feelings in me because I have "been there and done that". There were a couple of scenes where persons new to recovery were staggered by the new hope that was shown to them. I cried at those scenes because I *remember* that exact feeling from when I first started going to meetings. And I cringed when characters with long-term abstinence relapsed or nearly relapsed. I myself once relapsed back into active addiction when I was not able to get in touch with my sponsor, a reality eerily similar to one situation in this movie.
There were some mild sex scenes; R-rated stuff. It would be hard to make a movie about sex addiction without depicting at least some sex. These scenes were not gratuitous but were an integral part of the story, so I had no difficulty with them: I just shut my eyes to stay connected with the story rather than be distracted by the view.
My only negative remarks on the realism of this movie are that the meetings depicted had more of a "flavor" of an NA (Narcotics Anonymous) meeting. One is MUCH more likely to be hugged at an NA meeting than at "S" meetings since recovering sex addicts tend to have a lot of issues around body contact. Then there is the manner in which people were depicted as sharing at meetings. I can't really put a finger on what the difference is but the dialog was much more like the way people share in NA meetings.
But the above are minor observations compared to how much the movie got right. Someone really did their homework to get so much right. And someone really put some effort into keeping "Thanks for Sharing" from becoming a "sexploitation" movie. Last but not least, the cast, writers, and director did a really good job of creating credible characters in an accurate story.
I wish I'd seen this movie sooner so that I could have added my review sooner.
The movie itself follows multiple addicts whose recovery stories weave around each other. There are no plot twists, just a series of seemingly random, real life events and situations which plague addicts, and how addicts in recovery deal with them, sometimes successfully and sometimes not, but always making progress and learning how to live life.
The movie depicts a surprisingly complete spectrum of victories, failures, and facts of recovery: meetings, sponsorship, relapses into addiction, a "crash", a "crash and burn", job loses, near relapses, just-in-time phone calls, phone calls which went unanswered at critical times, suspicious girlfriends, wary wives, male addicts, female addicts, addict parents having to confront the affects of their addiction on their own children, addicts having to deal with their abusive parents, starting a healthy relationship with another addict in recovery or with a non-addict, the confusion caused by sex after long abstinence from sex, multiple addictions, and, above all, a message of hope and freedom. It's all there, and it's there in a surprisingly compact story.
The movie importantly points out a critical difference between sex addiction and substance abuse, and that is that substance abusers do not have their "drug of choice" manufactured within their own bodies, and that recovery from sex addiction is not about abstaining from sex forever but is about getting into a healthy relationship with sex.
"Thanks for Sharing" evoked strong feelings in me because I have "been there and done that". There were a couple of scenes where persons new to recovery were staggered by the new hope that was shown to them. I cried at those scenes because I *remember* that exact feeling from when I first started going to meetings. And I cringed when characters with long-term abstinence relapsed or nearly relapsed. I myself once relapsed back into active addiction when I was not able to get in touch with my sponsor, a reality eerily similar to one situation in this movie.
There were some mild sex scenes; R-rated stuff. It would be hard to make a movie about sex addiction without depicting at least some sex. These scenes were not gratuitous but were an integral part of the story, so I had no difficulty with them: I just shut my eyes to stay connected with the story rather than be distracted by the view.
My only negative remarks on the realism of this movie are that the meetings depicted had more of a "flavor" of an NA (Narcotics Anonymous) meeting. One is MUCH more likely to be hugged at an NA meeting than at "S" meetings since recovering sex addicts tend to have a lot of issues around body contact. Then there is the manner in which people were depicted as sharing at meetings. I can't really put a finger on what the difference is but the dialog was much more like the way people share in NA meetings.
But the above are minor observations compared to how much the movie got right. Someone really did their homework to get so much right. And someone really put some effort into keeping "Thanks for Sharing" from becoming a "sexploitation" movie. Last but not least, the cast, writers, and director did a really good job of creating credible characters in an accurate story.
I wish I'd seen this movie sooner so that I could have added my review sooner.