Too much of everything

Good concept, poorly executed.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

I won't bother with recounting the plot--plenty of others here have done that--but I will give some thoughts from the perspective of a 40-something who remembers fondly the movie and the times from whence it came.I remember hating this movie when I first saw it back in the day. I'd read half the novel and hated that too. My main memory of both of them, oddly enough, was the Coma Baby. It features heavily in the book but somewhat less so in the movie.Watching it again so many years later and so many years out from the 80s, I was surprised to find myself enjoying it. Perhaps it was a nostalgia thing. My mind was certainly flooding with associated memories. 1988 was the year I finished high school. I was soon to leave my little red-neck country town and move to the big smoke where a whole new life would begin (and there have been at least three more since then!).Some positives: I'm a huge Donald Fagen/Steely Dan fan, so Fagen's soundtrack was appreciated. It doesn't really sound like his regular stuff (until the very end), and was, frankly, often quite cheesy and even out of place at times. But I convinced myself I liked it. Other Fagen fans may also. The movie really grabs the 80s very effectively. Nightclubs, hair, blow, the whole bit. There is a surprising appearance from the wonderful Jason Robards which, shamefully, is uncredited according to IMDb. Considering the size of his role this is kind of odd.Negatives: Phoebe Cates seemed completely unconvincing as a model and Michael J. Fox was completely unconvincing as a...sorry, but, hey...as a grown-up. He's never really any different from how he was in Back to the Future or even Family Ties. He's still all got up in jeans and a suit jacket, skipping all over the place, and gulping, "Shucks" (at least seemingly). No disrespect to the guy. Just that this movie reminds that he was never so well suited to anything with pretensions to being serious. And that last point sums up the problems with this film: it eventually becomes apparent that the movie is trying to be taken seriously. It just doesn't work though. A pretentious novel as starting place doesn't help. Ham acting and cheese dialog don't help none neither.Still, an enjoyable time capsule. Kiefer does OK as wise-a** friend. The wonderful Frances Sternhagen, an appearance from the then-soon-to-be-late John Houseman, and even the magnificent William Hickey. Tracy Pollan is gorgeous and Swoosie Kurtz is her usual charming self. The ending is quite poignant, featuring Dianne Wiest, but isn't enough to really justify getting there.If you're 40-something, watch this with ice cream and snacks on a lazy weekday evening. If you're younger or older than that...probably don't bother, coz it ain't really that great.

I was fooled by comments here into watching this one. It is, in a sense, all flashback without an establishing context. We don't learn until the end that much of Fox's problem results from his mother's death. The other reason -- the 'divorce' -- is made much of but no context for that is established. So -- he drinks, snorts, and fails in his job as a fact-checker for a Vanity Fair type of magazine. And -- so what? The motivation seems just to be self-destruction, and that is not particularly interesting. I suppose the Robards character (like the coma baby) is a 'reflector' of the main character. But the Robards character seems actually to have had a life at some point in the distant past. What is he doing now? Is he still holding down a job? Why was Fox's character broke at some points yet affluent at others? Can anyone drink vodka all day, snort, and still function? His treatment of his brother was not only nasty, but unmotivated. What was the point of the ferret episode? The main character's equation of his friend and ex-wife at the end was incomprehensible. This is an incoherent ramble. No story. Tedious and radically un-involving.

I like most of Fox's movies with the exception of this waste of time and Casualties of War, but that had more to do with my disdain of Sean Penn than Fox. This movie is one of the most depressing pieces of film I ever saw. This movie was made along the same lines as Less than Zero which is about what I would rate this movie.Lets just say when I left the theater my thought was "There is 2 hours of my life I will never get back".Don't waste your time rent Back to the Future and enjoy a movie where Fox is entertaining not a depressed coke head.

There are two things that went wrong with this film. First and foremost is that Michael J. Fox is totally miscast for his role. I can understand him wanting to break away from the Alex Keaton character on "Family Ties." But, although he tries, he simply isn't right as a coke-addled, anguished writer. And it knocks the whole film off-kilter. Another problem is that the story doesn't translate easily onto film. There are some compensations- great supporting cast, catchy theme song ("Kiss & Tell" by Bryan Ferry), and excellent use of New York City locations. But they weren't enough to make the film a success, and the disappointing returns at the box office bear this out.