The Acid House

Name: The Acid House
Genre: Drama, Fantasy, Comedy
Released: August 6, 1999
Duration: 111 min
Rating: 55

1999

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Mixed or average reviews based on 15 Critic Reviews

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USER SCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 7 Ratings

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6.3

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6.3	User Score Generally favorable reviews based on 7 Ratings

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The Acid House

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Movie Details & Credits

Zeitgeist Films | Release Date: August 6, 1999 | Unrated

Summary: A surreal triptych adapted by "Trainspotting" author Irvine Welsh from his acclaimed collection of short stories. Combining a vicious sense of humor with hard-talking drama, the film reaches into the hearts and minds of the chemical generation, casting a dark and unholy light into the hidden corners of the human psyche. (Zeitgeist Films)

Director: Paul McGuigan

Genre(s): Drama, Fantasy, Comedy

Rating: Unrated

Runtime: 111 min

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Critic Reviews

Staff(Not Credited)

It's MTV meets Merchant-Ivory, at once manneristic, hallucinatory, and exhilarating. Read full review

Edward Guthmann

A blast of manic energy in the form of a film. Read full review

Tasha Robinson

The Acid House comes across as a shadow of "Trainspotting," albeit a vibrant, noisy, frantic shadow. Read full review

TV Guide Magazine Maitland McDonagh

God moves in mysterious -- some might say positively spiteful -- ways in this trio of scabrous tales adapted from short stories by "Trainspotting's" Irvine Welsh. Read full review

Jessica Winter

There's so little leavening humor here, and so much physical and emotional violence visited upon the already abject, that the film seems as pointless as the wasted lives it purports to examine. Read full review

Paula Nechak

It's not the direction that feels flaccid in this film. Surprisingly, it's the stories themselves, which provide a bit of a giggle but little else. Read full review

Lisa Schwarzbaum

Three stories by the guy who wrote Trainspotting, banged and smashed into a film by Paul McGuigan with none of Trainspotting's charm and all its grotesquerie. Read full review

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User Reviews

juliankennedy23

Oct 26, 2014

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. The Acid House: 8/10: A collection of three films strung together with wildly different results.

The first film (The Granton Star Cause 8/10) is a pleasant surprise and high comedy. It is a take on Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis mixed with God, elderly S and M, and a football team. Outrageous and funny it is great black comedy involving a bloke named Boab who is having a very bad day indeed. And as God lovingly points out it is his own lazy incompetence that is basically responsible for his troubles.

The second film (The Soft Touch 10/10) is a top-notch drama that, for me at least, hit close to home. Kevin McKidd portrays a get along cuckolded husband with perfection while Gary McCormick, as Larry is stunning as the upstairs neighbor. American audiences are not used to seeing their protagonists pushed this far without pushing back but to this ear it rang realistic and very sadly true. The third film

(The Acid House 2/10) is a very overlong train wreck that may have worked on paper but fails miserably in film. It includes such Trainspotting regulars as that horrible mechanical baby (Like a demented Chucky) and brainless Coco who amuses for about five minutes before becoming tiresome. Add horrendous dialog, endless poop jokes and an acid trip left over from a Peter Fonda film and you have one great mess. As a five-minute bit it could have worked but time seems to stand still while it drags its bloated carcass on the screen.

God (who appears in all 3 segments wonderfully played by Maurice Roeves) may seem vengeful in the first film and carelessly sadistic in the second, but this viewer was praying to him during the third segment to make the pain go away.… Expand

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AmurabiM.

May 17, 2006

if you are the kind of optimistic guy and you don`t share the kind of nihilistic mood of the 90s, maybe you can be disappointed from this material from the creator of that 90s milestone: "trainspotting". While "Trainspotting" offers hope and redemption with a woderful sense of humor and no if you are the kind of optimistic guy and you don`t share the kind of nihilistic mood of the 90s, maybe you can be disappointed from this material from the creator of that 90s milestone: "trainspotting". While "Trainspotting" offers hope and redemption with a woderful sense of humor and no chance for kirtsch and corny, this awful filme doesn`t offer anything. For those who loved tha boyle filme, this material (from this intrascendent mcguigan) is gonna be like mediocre filmmaking and poorly provocative material. Trying to be a comedy, this exercise of repulsion, pathetism, bad technique and "hilarious" scenes is no more than a bad film surrounded by the "prestige" of the writer. We know, now, that "trainspotting" was a fluke of Irvine Welsh but a great filme of Danny Boyle. "The acid house" is just a lack: of a mature writer, a disciplined director and, above all, a spark of talent.… Expand

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