Side Effects (2005/I)

User Rating:

5.1/10   

Director:

Kathleen Slattery-Moschkau

Writer:

Kathleen Slattery-Moschkau (written by)

Release Date:

9 September 2005 (USA)

Genre:

Romance | Comedy | Drama

Tagline:

Love is a drug!

Plot:

A young woman fumbles with love and ethics as she navigates a career with one of corporate America's darlings...the pharmaceutical industry.

Plot Keywords:

Corporate | Pharmaceuticals | Bra | Healthcare | Panties

Cast

Sandy Adell	...	Dr. Jones
David M. Ames	...	Dr. Jakobs (as David Ames)
John Apple	...	Plant Manager (as John L. Apple)
Ron Baumgartner	...	Business Man @ Plant
Collin Spencer	...	T. Bates (as Collin Bernhardt Spencer)
Bill Bolz	...	Scary Man (as William Bolz)
Stacy Brickson	...	Dr. Collins
Nathan Caracter	...	Recruiter
Tom Christianson	...	Dr. Michaels (as Tom Christensen)
Nathan Connor	...	Scott
Janet Cresson	...	Debbie
Tom Curtis	...	Dr. Allen
Dorian DeMichele	...	Jacqueline
David Durbin	...	Dan (as Dave Durbin)
Lee Ernst	...	Jack Klug

Runtime:

USA:90 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor) | Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.78 : 1

Certification:

Australia:M

Filming Locations:

Madison, Wisconsin, USA

Company:

Mo Productions

Soundtrack:

INTENSITY

Not bad but not great

It does some things very very well, and some things very very not well.

The star is Katherine Heigl (Grey's Anatomy), she is great - and very attractive (Girls, you should be easily able to get your boyfriend to watch this romantic comedy with you!). She plays Karly, a young woman who works for a pharmaceutical sales company. A fairly typical story of a young woman trying to figure out her professional life and love life. They told that main part of the film very well.

The story is completely believable. I have never been involved in the pharmaceutical sales industry but I am positive that is exactly how the board room meetings go, and the reaction from doctors. The good part with the story is how Karly struggles with the morality of her job. I also really liked that for the most part there wasn't a lot of dialogue - the story advanced just by watching the film. I think the writer did a really good job of that and shows how talented of a film writer she is. It was kind-of documentary-style and that was handled well. For this type of documentary-esquire fictional movie of a well-known industry - it can be controversial - which also means these types of movies don't always have a definitive answer. The filmmaker did a great job wtih an actual ending for the film and you know what her opinion is. Way too many movies like this don't really give you an ending or an opinion, but she does.

I really liked the character Zach, or more accurately, I liked the idea of the character of Zach. It pains me to say this but Lucian McAfee did not do a great job of playing Zach - that could have been much better. There were also unnecessary scenes between Zack and Karly that were just dragged out.

I know a lot of people are bothered by the sub-plots, which had missing plot points and a story and a beginning and an end. Those 'sub-plots' were really bad. I think some of the sub-plots were just there to add drama which isn't needed. I found some of them really detracted from the film.

And the really bad parts of the film: The editing, and sound. They would change the camera angles in a scene a lot for no observable purpose and got really annoying. Sound was not good, everybody has pointed that out. Also some scenes were shot poorly, I don't know if it was bad angles or bad frame sizes or what was wrong, but some scenes did not look proper.

Bottom line - Should you see it? Yes, because its a good story which you can get into. I love stories which are dramatic but are written in a romantic comedy kind of way. That was done really well in this film. However, if you are the type of person that notices the technicals of the film (editing, sound) you might want to stay away from it because you'll probably end up hating it. If you don't pay attention to too much detail, its a good movie. But if you are going to pick up on poorly written and shot scenes, then it will be a pretty bad movie.