Crazy for Party Drugs

E and coke are out apparently. These days, it’s all about mephedrone, ketamine and GHB. Early on in this film, we meet film student Arthur. Offering a possibly inadvertently amusing guide to the joy of drugs, he’s reminiscent of the posh space cadets in ‘Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’. Ketamine for example, offers life ‘through a David Lynch lens’. If we’d stuck with Arthur, we may have had a minor classic on our hands. As it is, this film is mainly about Holly, Oliver and Tony, a trio of polydrug adventurers, some struggling with misuse issues, others pretty much unapologetic about their predilections. This doesn’t feel like a particularly scientific film – an incident in Holly’s recent past makes her a slightly atypical case study, and there’s also a sense of the usual constructed narrative journey. But it does offer a few insights (if mainly for parents, we suspect) even if ultimately it does little more than confirm the old adage about drugs being a good servant and a bad master.