A lonely metermaid has a psychotic reaction to his medication and becomes convinced he's a superhero. A very select group of people in life are truly gifted. Special is a movie about everyone else.
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In a hospital on the outskirts of 1920s Los Angeles, an injured stuntman begins to tell a fellow patient, a little girl with a broken arm, a fantastic story of five mythical heroes. Thanks to his fractured state of mind and her vivid imagination, the line between fiction and reality blurs as the tale advances.
LES FRANKEN (Michael Rapaport) leads a painfully unremarkable life as a metermaid until he enrolls in a drug study for an experimental anti-depressant. An unexpected side effect of the drug convinces Les he is developing special powers and must quit his job to answer his new calling in life - Superhero. A very select group of people in life are truly gifted. Special is a movie about everyone else. Written by
Lawrence Fells
Michael Rapaport really saves this movie. Without him it would be much less watchable. It has a very interesting story and it is very well executed in many ways, but has a lot of small missteps that detract from my ability to believe in it as a story.
It's a story of a common, boring everyman (Rapaport) who enters a drug trial for an experimental drug that is supposed to remove people's self-doubt. On him, though, it goes too far, and he begins to believe that he has super powers. This part of the film is, for the most part, well-executed.
However, a lot of little details don't ring true. I won't go through all of them, but early in the movie is one good example: A man goes into a comic book store and tries to sell a comic. We are supposed to believe he is homeless and desperate, but he doesn't look homeless. He has a long gray beard, yes, but he's dressed in clean clothes and his beard is meticulously groomed. It's like the director thought that a long beard was all you needed to look homeless.
Additionally, this may sound like nit-picking, but the director's choice of music in some areas seems way off. A scene will look like it is trying to be dramatic and the music that is playing is some oddball high energy song. Sometimes this works well (like the ending of Dr. Strangelove) but in this case it just looks haphazard.
Overall its worth a watch, but its unfortunate that the film makers couldn't go that extra step and make it a better film.
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Michael Rapaport really saves this movie. Without him it would be much less watchable. It has a very interesting story and it is very well executed in many ways, but has a lot of small missteps that detract from my ability to believe in it as a story.
It's a story of a common, boring everyman (Rapaport) who enters a drug trial for an experimental drug that is supposed to remove people's self-doubt. On him, though, it goes too far, and he begins to believe that he has super powers. This part of the film is, for the most part, well-executed.
However, a lot of little details don't ring true. I won't go through all of them, but early in the movie is one good example: A man goes into a comic book store and tries to sell a comic. We are supposed to believe he is homeless and desperate, but he doesn't look homeless. He has a long gray beard, yes, but he's dressed in clean clothes and his beard is meticulously groomed. It's like the director thought that a long beard was all you needed to look homeless.
Additionally, this may sound like nit-picking, but the director's choice of music in some areas seems way off. A scene will look like it is trying to be dramatic and the music that is playing is some oddball high energy song. Sometimes this works well (like the ending of Dr. Strangelove) but in this case it just looks haphazard.
Overall its worth a watch, but its unfortunate that the film makers couldn't go that extra step and make it a better film.