Overrated

Absolutely the worst movie.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

An introverted meter maid attempts to change his pathetic personal life by participating in an anti-anxiety drug study, but quickly runs into some psychotic side-effects. When the drug alters his perception of reality, his mind takes the cue to mean he's developed super powers, which he immediately applies to the streets as a self-styled hero. A dark comedy that's quite similar to Rainn Wilson's odd superhero send-up Super, it's often hopelessly lost in the deep, complicated middle ground between absurdist comedy and bleak, grizzled reality. Character actor and stand-up comic Michael Rapaport plays a good sympathetic lead, but his naive nature and good intentions only make the tribulations he endures that much more difficult for the viewing audience. It's a light, energetic first act that's backed by a tough, distressed greater story, and the frequent reminders that the protagonist is hallucinating steal most of the drama from its root concept. A troubling little package that can't quite settle its own private identity crisis.

It took me quite a while to get past the cinematography. I could find no reason why the entire film was shot hand-held. It brought nothing to the story and was extremely distracting until I got past it and and started appreciating the acting and story. All DP's and directors should know when to put the camera on sticks and trust the actors to bring motion and emotion to the frame. The music was another stumbling bock for me. Extremely obvious and over the top choices were made throughout - and what's truly unfortunate is that I recognized a number of loops that were used in creating the score. Not a good sign. Having said all of this - I still laud the writers and directors for their effort and the actors for their work as well.

This above-average but anti-climactic low-budget indie psychodrama "Special (RX) Specioprin Hydrochloride" depicts the psychotic delusions that a shy young guy suffers from after he participates in clandestine drug testing program. "True Romance" star Michael Rapaport excels as deranged protagonist Les Franken, and Rapaport's performance testifies to his genius as an actor that he can forge a genuinely sympathetic character who could easily have been portrayed as a shallow lunatic. Unfortunately, freshman co-scenarists & directors Hal Haberman and Jeremy Passmore fail to develop their screenplay past its provocative premise. Happily, they shun the low road which would have made "Special" into a lame-brained, predicable comedy. Instead, they play everything extremely straight and narrow so this satirical character study of a pathetic man becomes a parable about paranoia. The subtlety with which they handle the action in the early stages makes "Special" appear promising, but the luster grows tarnished about an hour into this 81-minute epic.Les Franken is an anonymous meter cop for the Los Angeles Police Department. He writes parking citations during the day. Once he starts writing a ticket, he claims that he cannot stop the process. Nevertheless, when a woman gives him a sob story about her bankruptcy, Les breaks the rule and tears up the ticket. Later, Les' boss chews him out for having such a soft heart. Our modest but unassuming hero lives alone and has no friends other than two geeks who own a comic book store. Les worries that he is too old to be reading comic books, but these simple-minded sagas fuel his avid fantasies. It isn't long after he ingests the medication that its side effects kick in and his life takes some dramatic turns. While eating cereal on his sofa and watching television, Les levitates in the air. Mind you, he doesn't rise very high off the cushions, but he ascends high enough to blow his mind. Suddenly, Les imagines that the pills have unlocked his latent superhero powers. Actually, Dr. Dobson (Jack Kehler of "The Big Lebowski") explains that Les is on a new experimental antidepressant which "inhibits the brain chemical responsible for self-doubt." Initially, Haberman and Passmore let our hero imagine that he is a super hero who can leap off a desk and hover above the floor. Indeed, we—the audience—buy into Les' delusion because we see it from his perspective. At first, "Special" is a lot of fun because we want to believe what Les believes, but Haberman and Passmore evoke our suspicions that Les is not only fooling himself but us, too. The co-directors let Les get away with a couple of things amid all the other things that he doesn't get away with. When Les runs through a wall, he vanishes into the wall. Afterward, however, he reappears with bruises and blood stains on his head. Haberman and Passmore seem intent of confusing us about the reality and illusion of Les' delusions. Dr. Dobson wants to administer an antidote, but Les feels that it will divest him of his super powers.Believe it or not, Les insists he is indestructible. Our deluded protagonist starts cruising town in a goofy 'Special' super hero outfit with the name of the drug manufacturer on his back. Les looks like a mental patient on the loose. He tackles people in stores who he mistakes as shoplifters. These misguided stunts win him a segment on the local newscast. The scene where he tries to turn himself in at the LAPD is hilarious. Les thinks that he can read the minds of those people around him. Basically, everything that Les does backfires on him, except on two occasions. He saves a supermarket clerk from a gunman and recovers a woman's purse from a thief. Eventually, the financial backers of the pharmaceutical company that invented the medication, the Exiler Brothers, Jonas (Blackthorne) and Ted (Ian Bohen), try to kill him because his hallucinatory behavior will discredit them. Les calls them 'the suits' and they become his arch-enemies. At one point, they use their dark, sinister automobile as a battering ram to run over him not once but twice! The redeeming thing about "Special" is that there are probably people out there like Les who might imitate his behavior under similar circumstances. Sadly, "Special" emerges as a little less than special because Haberman and Passmore dream up subplots and then dispense with them. Happily, Haberman and Passmore never venture off into broad comedy. The possibility of a romance between Les and a supermarket cashier with her own problems fails to materialize. One wonders whether Haberman and Passmore realized that they were channeling a combo of the 1968 Cliff Robertson movie "Charly," based on the novel "Flowers for Algernon" as well as M. Night Shyamalan's "Unbreakable." Instead, Passmore has stated that the movie "Jackass" inspired him. Unmistakably, "Special" deconstructs the way the media and our culture affect certain types of impressionable individuals.

The idea of 'drug reaction causes man to think he has superpowers' definitely has potential, but this film didn't fulfill it. Aside from bad acting by everyone but Michael Rapaport (and who knows how he would have done if he'd been forced off his one note), there was questionable characterization (is the Simpson's Comic Book Guy really a believable model for a store proprietor?) and unbelievable situations (none of his friends called 911? Not even when he was injured, obviously delusion and locked in a store bathroom overnight? No police officer recognized him in all the time he wandered around in that singular getup?). Further the 'rich, evil corporation owner' plot is due for a rest.Switching the viewer in and out of Rapaport's character's point-of-view was an effective way to heighten tension, though: even with our knowledge of 'what was really happening' it was difficult not to view things from Les's perspective.