| Love is the Drug | |
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Original theatrical poster |
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| Directed by | Elliott Lester |
| Produced by | Jed Nolan |
| Written by | Steve Allison Wesley Strick |
| Starring | John Patrick Amedori Lizzy Caplan Daryl Hannah D.J. Cotrona |
| Cinematography | Florian Stadler |
| Editing by | Steve Rees |
| Studio | Box Office Productions Alpine Pictures |
| Distributed by | Alpine Pictures |
| Release date(s) | October 6, 2006 |
| Running time | 96 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Love is the Drug is a 2006 American drama produced by Box Office Productions and Alpine Pictures. Directed by Elliott Lester, it was filmed in Los Angeles, California. It was previewed at the Slamdance Film Festival in January 2006 before being released theatrically on a limited basis in Seattle, Washington on October 6, 2006. Starring John Patrick Amedori, Lizzy Caplan, and D.J. Cotrona, the film tells the story of a social outcast who becomes obsessed with a pretty wealthy girl and begins stealing drugs for her friends to be near her. It received mixed reviews from critics.
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Jonah Brand (John Patrick Amedori) is a scholarship student at a private school full of wealthy students. Poor and lacking the social confidence of his classmates, at graduation he finds himself attracted to Sara Weller (Lizzy Caplan), who is part of a group of sex and drug users that include her sometime boyfriend Troy (Jonathon Trent) and their friends Lucas (D.J. Cotrona) and Erin (Jenny Wade). Sara returns his interest but the rest of her group discourage Jonah's attention. However, after the group learn that he works part-time at a pharmacy doing delivery, they bring them into his world for the summer, in exchange for his stealing prescription drugs for them. Jonah's mother, Sandra (Daryl Hannah), is too busy working multiple jobs to try to keep up appearances, to try to deal with her son's sudden change in behavior. As the group gets more experimental with their drugs of choice, Jonah unravels as he becomes more and more obsessed with Sara. After Troy dies under questionable circumstances, his parents hire private investigator Phill Hackwith (Bruce A. Young) to try to find out the truth. The investigator asks Jonah questions with no luck of any answers. Jonah then confesses to Sara that he was the one who bought the drugs for Troy. He asks her if she will agree with him at robbing the pharmacy. She agrees. On that day Jonah loses his temper and physically abuses his mother. He later meets Sara in the bathroom of Lucas' house. Trying to convince her to love him, she doesn't. He tries to give her drugs but she is reluctant to taking them. During this time the private investigator comes to Lucas' house and asks for Sara. Erin goes looking for her. After realizing that Sara will never love him, Jonah commits suicide by stabbing himself with a pair of scissors. The film is ended with Lucas, Erin, and the private investigator walking into the bathroom and seeing Jonah's dead body with Sara frightened in the corner.
Love is the Drug debuted as an entry in the January 2006 Slamdance Film Festival. It was given a limited theatrical release in Seattle, Washington on October 6, 2006.[1] It was released to Region 4 DVD in Australia.[2]
Love is the Drug holds a rating of 60% and an average rating of 5.2 out of 10 on the film aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes, based on reviews from five critics.[3] Variety's Justin Chang called the film "darkly compelling" and a "smartly acted and strikingly confident feature", he praised the cinematography and screenplay. He also praised Caplan's performance as Sara and felt Cotrona was "explosively charismatic", but he criticized the film's ending as "repetitive and overwrought" and found that the final moments "played like a cheap stunt".[4] While Seattle Times reviewer Ted Fry praised the film as a "small, earnest and generally well-acted movie [that] infuses a horrifying sense of realism in the sexual and drug-fueled behavior of kids who believe they are mature beyond their years", he also criticized the characters as being hard to identify or sympathize with and found Johah's eventual actions to be "unpleasantly erratic".[5] Soren Andersen of The News Tribune panned the film, feeling the characters were sympathetic. In particular, he felt Sara was "vapid" and Lucas a "Robert Downey Jr. doppelganger" and "heartlessly manipulative substance abuser".[6] The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Bill White gave the film a grade of "D" and stated that Lestor "aim[ed] for an edgy teen melodrama and finishe[d] with something less than a spineless horror flick". In particular, he felt the ending was "as predictable as it is improbable" and stated that it seemed like "an alternate ending to 'Beyond the Valley of the Dolls,' shot by the gaffers during a meal break."[7]