Review: The Adderall Diaries

James Franco is writer Stephen Elliott, whose life starts to crumble when a public reading of his work is ruined by the re-emergence of Stephen’s father (Ed Harris), whom Stephen has claimed both in and out of book form was an abusive monster who is dead. Clearly daddy isn’t dead, and while that doesn’t necessarily mean Stephen’s entirely a bullshit artist, his editor (Cynthia Nixon) has a bugger of a time trying to prevent publishers from baulking on his latest literary effort. Also not helping things, Stephen has writer’s block and uses Adderall (and engages in other kinds of not particularly healthy behaviour) to deal with his inability to get anywhere on his latest writing project. He’s interested in a court case involving a suspected murderer (Christian Slater, basically playing Franco’s role in the better “True Story”), who has apparently killed his wife and kids but maintains he’s innocent and that he’s a good dad. Attending the trial, Stephen also encounters a pretty reporter (Amber Heard), whom he strikes up a relationship with that we all know he’s going to fuck up at some point. Then there’s dear old dad, who despite screwing up his son’s literary career, maintains he’d like to develop a father-son bond with estranged Stephen.

James Franco, why do you have to make it so difficult to defend you? The man has talent, and probably should’ve won an Oscar for “127 Hours” but then he goes and makes a bunch of stoner comedies with his friends and other poor script choices. He’s even had a stint on “General Hospital”, for fuck’s sake, let alone some of his rather questionable off-screen behaviour. This 2016 drama from director/writer Pamela Romanowsky (her first significant feature film effort) based on Stephen Elliott’s memoir is not the best example of Franco’s acting talent, but it’s certainly far from his most questionable choice over the years. In fact, he’s one of the film’s strengths.

It’s the film itself that is the problem. There’s actually a good movie in here somewhere, but Romanowsky never quite finds it. All of the film’s parts are individually interesting and well-done but they don’t quite work all together. I think the chief reason for that is the film’s length. Whoever thought this material should’ve resulted in a film running less than 90 minutes should be taken out and shot. There’s just not enough time here to deal with each individual element effectively, and so it all feels a tad underdone and unsatisfying.

Franco and his seemingly pained and troubled eyes are actually perfect for this role of a man with a past he has never quite gotten around to dealing with. In fact, his recollections of said past may not be entirely reliable (He’s also not terribly likeable, but that didn’t bother me so much, perhaps due to Franco himself). On that front, the film starts really well and is quite intriguing as what we are led to believe to be true is pretty much turned on its head 18 minutes in. Also helping things is a pitch-perfectly cast Ed Harris as Franco’s possibly violent arsehole of a father. He doesn’t get a lot of screen time, but Harris makes every bit of it work in a really terrific, layered performance. Hell, despite an ill-suited brown hair and mousy look, Amber Heard is perfectly fine too, as is Christian Slater in a small role.

However, it becomes clear pretty soon that this is simply too much material and not enough time to properly deal with it. At this length I think the Slater character and subplot ought to have been jettisoned in favour of more scenes involving the other plot elements.

Some fascinating stuff going on here but not nearly enough time to appropriately deal with all of it, this one ends up frustratingly short of the mark. The cast try hard, but something went very wrong here (For starters, Wilmer Valderrama’s casting in such a miniscule role suggests some excised material, surely). What did producer Robert Redford see here?

Rating: C+