The movie poster states that this makes Trainspotting looking like a mild-mannered youth comedy. I can see some resemblance here and there, the trippy way of filming, both movies based on novels by Irvine Welsh, or having Ewen Bremner acting in both, but Danny Boyle's trainspotting is just a bit better in my opinion. The Acid House is fun to watch though, who doesn't like to watch some white Scottish ghetto trash in their daily habitat? The Acid House is three different stories (segments), The Granton Star Cause, A Soft Touch, and The Acid House. Each story has his moments, some are better than others, The Acid House was the most trippy and crazy to watch, with an excellent Ewen Bremner (playing a junkie character is apparently what he does the best). The movie is a bit graphic, just the way I like it, but I can see some people (nerds and/or bible thumpers) getting offended. Anyway if you liked Trainspotting there is no doubt in my mind you will like this one as well.
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deloudelouvain15 February 2020
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yarbles-224 September 1999Set in the urban decay of lower-class areas of Scottish cities, this film has some really funny scenes in it, but also some that make you feel like scum for belonging to the human race. My favourite part of the whole thing has to be God. He is by far the funniest character in the three vignettes, its worth seeing just for him. The subtitles also can be a source of humour they were obviously put in for American audiences who would not understand some of the slang and heavy scottish accents, they do not always say exactly what the characters actually say.
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johnnyboyz6 November 2008Like Trainspotting a mere year before it, The Acid House adopts the approach of telling a groggy and visually disgusting tale about Scottish people living lives full of drugs, sex and the like in locations that visually repulse you. Remember the 'worst toilet in Scotland' scene in Trainspotting? The Acid House sees its characters pretty much inhabit locations akin to this one 80% of the time and the characters get up to all sorts of equally repulsive activities like unknowingly eating food covered with essence of dog faeces and being buggered by a woman complete with strap on. But Trainspotting wasn't all gross out and allowed us outside into public parks and streets; it allowed us daylight and, to a degree, relief from its content. The Acid House grants us outdoor scenes but has the characters spinning round uncontrollably and presents a lot of its shots in close up format complete with odd angles and fast edits - you could be forgiven for feeling sick.
The Acid House was penned by Trainspotting writer Irvin Welsh and follows a similarly dank and downbeat style of storytelling and setting. This time the film is split up into three shorts rather than one continuous narrative alá Trainspotting which some others might tell you felt like two stories given the path involving the drug deal the film decides to go down right nearer the end. Visually, The Acid House is very similar to Trainspotting but it also blurs the boundary between realism and surrealism in the same fashion Trainspotting did. If there's one thing I enjoyed Trainspotting for, it was the use of the everyday; of the mundane in locales and dialogue as people spouted Sean Connery trivia and made reference to famous goals in World Cups gone by.
But Trainspotting also incorporated a fair amount of surrealism or of the impossible in real life. The Acid House adopts this combined approach and Welsh often uses drugs as a catalyst once again to get across the odd content. A lot of the ambiguity is missing in The Acid House; whereas when Renton went down the toilet and came home soaking wet, there's no obvious link that he literally went down the toilet in order to get wet whereas when the character of Coco (Bremner) is struck by lightening, he has transformed into someone else's body and that's a clear cut reason for the story to even happen. It's not so much a criticism as it is a perspective; the ambiguity worked well in Trainspotting and added to the overall tone of the humour whereas The Acid House crosses the line and tells us that this sort of thing is possible in the film's universe. I have to say that I preffered it when it was ambiguous.
The Acid House's first story provides good ammunition for Claire Monk's theory about the British male in crisis in the 1990s. Boab (McCole) is a young, British male whose life systematically falls apart within an hour or so he is a man in crisis. He is humiliated and dumped by his partner down the phone for being unable to 'satisfy' her thus rendered inadequate and unfit to adopt the role of a male partner in a relationship. He also looses his job thus becoming unemployed, another ingredient to Monk's theory to do with a male 'panic' in contemporary British cinema. But a meeting with God (Roëves) in a pub, again giving the film a clear cut surrealistic feel rather than ambiguously so, sees him changed into a fly to wreck revenge. This seems to have sparked some controversy given it presents 'God' in a less than flattering manner and has him swear a lot. But more so from my perspective, God is a character that gives certain individuals the powers to maim and harm, something Boab takes full advantage of.
The first story whilst beginning interestingly, minutely fails dramatically with its close ups of half eaten food, dog excrement and fat, sweaty men being penetrated with a dildo in their living room. The second story is easier to identify with in the sense there is a clear source for antagonism and its lead character is put in a position we may feel sorry for. Johnny (McKidd) gets a new neighbour in Larry (McCormack) who doesn't take long to become the crazed individual we sense upon the first meeting. The story is more realistic in the sense it focuses on a lower class part of society as they live in cramped and downbeat living conditions with frequent long shots of other buildings and people looking out of their windows as one. The situation and the manner in which it plays out with people at stake and a distressed baby making itself known at certain times keeps the story routed and somewhat humbling.
The third story is the most outlandish and sees football obsessed Coco struck by lightening thus switching mindsets with an unborn baby. The idea is interesting in the sense it's an adult in a baby's body and vice-versa. But the scenario is played for laughs disappointingly so; Coco can't wait for the next breast feeding session and watches his newly adopted parents go at it in the bedroom with perverted glee. The Freudian elements begin to crop up here to do with a babies mapping on and attraction to its mother but it's a little weak. On the flipside, the film takes a good actor like Bremner and has him lie in a bed screaming for most of the time. I've seen a lot worse but The Acid House isn't a great film; it's grimy and unpleasant but isn't as brilliant as it might think it is. -
Delerium21 August 1999"The Acid House" is a series of three short stories penned by "Trainspotting" novelist Irvine Welsh, and true to his style, it is inspired by a terribly bad acid trip. Being a huge fan of Irvine Welsh, I had high hopes for this film, but I was also aware that it would most likely not be as good as Trainspotting. It wasn't, but a good movie all the same.
The first story is about a 23 year old soccer player who is booted out by his mates, gets kicked out of his parents house, looses his girlfriend, and looses his job all in the space of a few hours. After all this, he "meets God". The second concerns a very disturbed couple with a newborn baby, and their wacky neighbor who moves into the flat above them. And the third, and best, of them is about a young man who is struck by lightning after taking a hit of acid and his soul is transfered into the body of a newborn baby. Very strange stories, only Irvine Welsh could have done these.
As a movie, it has all the basic ingredients, save for a few dodgy dialogue bits here and there. All the actors involve give their best, and it was a pretty satisfying and mind boggling experience. It isn't as well laid out as "Trainspotting", though, so people expecting a new "Trainspotting" might not get what they expect. -
amrmriad6 January 2019A nice movie. Not Great but fun to watch. Just don't compare to Trainspotting and don't have high expectations.
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siderite23 July 2005I am not a native English speaker, but I take pride in understanding English spoken movies, not only the words, but also the expressions and colloquialisms. I understood about 30% of this movie, so strong was the Scottish accent, so my review and grade might be influenced by this.
This movie is actually made of three separate stories. I really didn't understand anything from the third one, the first was a Metamorphosis like plot that focuses on the opportunities we are given and choose not to use them, while the second was about this guy who takes incredible abuse from his wife, loves and cares for his baby and in the end forgives the wife and they get back together (for more abuse?!).
I would say that this is a movie that tried to capitalize on the enormous success of Trainspotting, but even if these are based on Irwing stories, that doesn't mean they are exceptionally good. Being Scottish probably helps, too :) -
rob-23610 September 2000Irvine Welsh's follow up to Trainspotting hits the screen as three short stories set in Edinburgh, all with a few of Welsh's trade marks, drug culture, depression, the working class and Hibernian football club. Uneasy to watch in places, it is no less than very well written, 2 of the stories having a darkly comic twist to them while the 2nd story a serious (and shockingly realistic) plot to it. Will not appeal to most, including myself to a point, but will no doubt adopt a cult following.
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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. -
Superunknovvn8 July 2006Wow, those accents. I did catch the occasional f- and c-words but most of the rest was like a foreign language I don't speak. "The Acid House" is a reminder of that short period of time when drunk, violent, sexually perverted and/or drug-addicted Scotsmen were the hippest thing in cinema. "Trainspotting" had established that kind of hipness and "The Acid House" tried to cash in on that success by bringing some lesser short stories by Irvine Welsh to the big screen. Well, "The Acid House" doesn't come close to "Trainspotting". It's silly stupid in its best moments and incredibly annoying in its worst. The stories are neither very original, nor are they very entertaining and the editing already seems hopelessly dated (after all almost ten years have passed since 1998). In the end "The Acid House" serves as little more than a reminder why it sucked growing up in the late 90's with rave music and bad drugs.
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Sean Kerr8 October 1999This is unbelievable! Has all the usual Irvine Welsh ingredients - scabby parts of Edinburgh like Pilton, lots of colourful language, plenty of violence, sex/nudity and masses of humour. Although much of the humour will cross many peoples line of bad taste, this is absolutely hilarious. Being from just outside Edinburgh, the scary thing is that these type of people actually exist.
Many of the cast from Trainspotting, Small faces and Looking out for Jo Jo reappear.
This is tremendous for all the above reasons. The soundtrack is pretty impressive too. -
Acid House written by Irvine Welsh(the best modern writer)is a brilliant "short stories" novel.The movie however is pretty disappointing.I expected it to be somewhat like Trainspotting,the classic Welsh adaptation and one of the best movies ever made.
The stories are not as good as they were written down.The acting makes it up a little and the Scottish dialogues are great. 5/10 -
pburris10 May 2002As a rule, adaptations tend to omit the greatest aspects and preserve the lowest common denominators. McGuigan's take on Irvine Welsh's Acid house stories avoids this pitfall handily and features three of the stories in Welsh's collection of the same name. While I would have chosen to adapt a couple different ones in addition to the god and the fly sequence (the story about the sad barwench in Amsterdam and that of a family who's da knocks out Mickey Mouse in Disneyworld come to mind), McGuigan does a fine job with pacing, editing, and directing his talent.
In particular, Ewen Bremner as Coco Bryce is vitally funny as the raver transplanted into the body of a bourgeoise baby, and assertively foul in a well-needed antidote to the all-too-kind doormat in the preceding story. This movie will enver be in Bosley Carrothers' collection of Fifty Great Movies, but it's good watching for a late night, a lazy afternoon, or a busy Friday evening with the mates. -
bsinc9 April 2003Because I would have never ever seen this movie through to the end. Although there are some, but not many, funny moments in this movie I couldn't understand more than about 15%(the fancy English couple in the 3rd story included) of what people were saying. Three short stories, none with a real point, with just some of the most miserable and lifeless people I could have imagined and a load of foul language. Didn't find it funny, didn't find it amusing, didn't find any sense in it. 4/10
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jxmakela26 July 2004I don't give a rat's a$$ whether the social commentary is accurate or not or what this film's "artistic sensibilities" are supposed to be. This movie is a riot. It's romp through the ugliest, most politically incorrect depths of everyone's subconscious. This film needs to be watched during a particularly bad hangover, wearing only underpants with holes in them, while eating cold pizza from the night before and sucking on your first hair-of-the-dog beer.
The second segment is the best one, and also the most realistic one. A pathetic, hopeless man living a grim, hopeless life has his become accustomed to his misery, until a neighbor from hell makes his existence even more intolerable than before. This segment is definitely an allegory of every working class life. -
Alea Intrica18 September 2001First and foremost, the director should have his license for musical interludes revoked. There are far too many of these in the film. A few such interludes are sometimes justified for setting mood, effectively "fast-forwarding" through events, or relieving the viewer after tense period. The many interludes in this do none of these things, with the music seemingly chosen at random. They give the impression that the director is compensating for a lack of ideas. Sitting undecided between drama and dark humour, it fails to convey either with much force. Still, it has its entertaining moments. Certainly could be a worse directorial debut. Still glad I caught it on TV since I've eyed it in the video store. (5/10)
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David Elroy17 November 2001I watch a lot of extreme cinema and am always wary of fakery and sensationalism, but I felt that The Acid House had the intelligence and heart needed to back up its shocking stories. It is like a cross between "Happiness" and "Requiem for a Dream," with magic and surrealism to boot. The Scottish accents are incomprehensible (thank goodness for the subtitles) but fascinating. "Trainspotting" is, I think, a better film overall, but this one sure gains points for audacity, intensity, and wit.
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allyjack31 August 1999Fairly appalling enterprise suggests Welsh to be an infantile artist, helplessly drawn to the violent milieu he knows best, but unable to resist vacuous elaborations rooted in banal fantasy. The first story is a ham-fisted, meaningless trudge with a B-movie sci-fi premise. The second achieves some poignancy, but only via the outrage-inducing surplus of humiliation visited on its central character. The third and most risible seems to aspire to being a dislocated sequel to Child's Play. The direction is consistently clueless - all whirling sound and fury, a slave to the extreme unpleasantness of the environment; suffocating in an ill-chosen music score and in indifferently flashy acting. This is sheer stupidity masquerading as a guerilla sensibility - as arbitrary and hollow as the abstract images that link the three sections.
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garethm-223 July 2004After the remarkable success of Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh, set out on a conscious mission to weed out the type of popular vote that somebody like he could never be comfortable with. Praise the Lord because the product was a much darker, grittier second film called The Acid House, three short stories whose common ground is the Scottish working classes. In truth the third segment is actually a sprawling mess but it at least shows how horribly wrong some of Welsh's bizarre story lines translate to the screen. In spite of this, director Paul McGuigan, superbly brings Welsh's other two stories to life and it's surely praise indeed when one can exclude a full third of a movie and still class it as one of their all time favourites.
The first segment, The Granton Star Cause (named after a football team), is without doubt the most sidesplitting black comedy that this writer has ever seen. It follows Boab Coyle who is about to have a couple of days from hell. He loses his home, his girlfriend, his job, his place on the football team, gets a criminal record, and gets beaten up by a prison officer into the bargain. Welsh not only simulates real life brilliantly with these scenes but he also shows an immaculate contempt for political correctness and human nature in general as the selfish protractors of Boab's grief, all with their own agendas, insist on blaming circumstances rather than their saintly selves. His parents need space because they are going through `a dangerous phase'. His pretentious boss Rafferty tells him `it's important to remember it's not the person we make redundant, it's the post'. The police officers are perfectly understanding about a rape because `the hoor was askin' for it' but not so understanding about Boab smashing up a telephone box since one of the officers happens to be a BT shareholder! The hilarious coup de grace occurs when Boab, in the middle of drowning his sorrows, encounters a chain smoking, lager-drinking beardie who turns out to be God. It is here that one realises how much the Scottish brogue adds to the already colourful and entertaining dialogue (witness the brilliant Maurice Roeves: `that c**t Nietzche was wide by the mark when he said I was deed. I'm naw deed, I just dinnae give a f**k'). God takes his own self-loathing out on Boab, turning him into a fly and Boab himself then returns to haunt all those who caused him grief, lacing his ex-girlfriends curry with dog s**t amongst other things. But as if all that wasn't enough laughter for one day the film offers up a riotously funny finale whereby Boab catches his parents in the middle of a kinky sex role-play in the living room accompanied by Barry Adamson's suitably seedy The Vibes Aint Nothing But The Vibes. These what goes on behind closed doors' scenes are really where Welsh excels himself, portraying them as he does with hysterical imagination. The sweat dripping from his every pore Boab Senior, reminiscent of a circus strong man complete with black leotard, is admitting to sexual liaisons with Dolly Parton, Anna Ford and Madonna as his wife Doreen punishes him for his sins with a strap on dildo. Mercifully (even for the most hardened of Welsh fans) she is saved from delivering the ultimate punishment (to `S***e in your mouth') when forced to answer the phone to her `pester' of a daughter Cathy. But before getting back to work on her husband she knocks the final nail in Boab's pitiful coffin, swiping him dead with a newspaper, the melancholic Nick Cave by now drowning out the proceedings perfectly.
The second segment, A Soft Touch, never quite lives up to the first but is still very good and shares many of its themes. The victim of the piece is the gullible Johnny who is married to the detestable Catriona, who in turn is screwing the equally hateful new neighbour from hell Larry. The only light in Johnny's life is his daughter Chantel, who as it happens isn't really his daughter at all. This is Welsh at his very darkest. It is his commentary on the frustrations and consequent suffering of the working classes. At times it shaves so close to the bone as to feel utterly depressing, an effect driven home by Beth Orton's Precious Maybe and Arab Strap's I Still Miss You. However there are enough comic moments to lighten the burden, most notably when the cocksure Larry is dancing by himself in front of a mirror to the strains of T-Rex's Hot Love. Furthermore, Larry's sheer atrociousness is a source of much amusement during the film even if the cruel mental torture that he inflicts upon his neighbour is beyond what any decent man should have to bare. The tense encounters between Larry and Johnny turn into a gripping survival of the fittest contest. In a tragic but wholly realistic conclusion Johnny welcomes the pregnant and rejected Catriona back into his life, reflecting the vicious circle that Welsh is so keen to portray. -
tim-764-29185624 November 2010Trainspotting remains my favourite film. Period.
I was under absolutely no illusion that this three-shorts set was similar, or even related to Danny Boyle's brilliant masterpiece. Irvine Welsh's stories are one thing, but no-one can doubt that the phenomenal success of Trainspotting was largely down Boyle's sublime direction and the energetic young cast.
I'm no prude and whilst black humour and the darkness of human degradation often inspires and moves me, The Acid House just made me feel quite ill. Unless the viewer is as wasted or drunk as the characters when it might all seem a joke, it's all rather nauseating. -
hayeda15 September 2000When I first saw the movie in Istanbul at a cinema, I was shocked and almost disgusted by the movie. I guess that was because I didn't know what to expect beforehand and therefore I wasn't prepared for such a totally weird movie. But afterwards I started to appreciate the weirdness of the movie and got more involved with such underground styled movies. I think it was a pretty mind-twisting film. But I guess it's not for everyone...
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The stories were pretty weird, not really funny and not really cunning. I'm not sure what the point of the stories was .. The first story was actually mostly sick, the second was just really really pathetic and the third was only weird (the fake baby was actually quite badly made).
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CuriosityKilledShawn9 April 2012The Acid House was unfairly judged as an inferior Trainspotting imitation upon its release. It's completely inaccurate as director Paul McGuigan was offered the job before that movie was even released and deliberately held-off on watching so as not to be influenced by Danny Boyle's overrated drug-fest. The Acid House is actually a very colorful, sporadically atmospheric, and so totally over-the-top movie experience that it makes Trainspotting look pedestrian.
Adapted by Irvine Welsh himself from his own outrageous short story collection the film features three 35-minute stories of depravity, revenge, existentialism, and nihilism. Dark matter indeed, especially for a comedy, but there's literally not one minute without a moment of humor.
The first story features Robert Anthony Coyle, more commonly known as Boab, a fat, lazy, unambitious loser still living at home with his parents at the age of 23. In the space of a few hours he loses his place on his football team (the pretentious Granton Star), his friends, his girl, his job, and is kicked out of home. Feeling sorry for himself over a pint of lager in a scummy pub he meets God, who is none-too-pleased with Boab for simply folding with the cards he has been dealt in life instead of playing the game. He punishes Boab by turning him into a fly. Because God is evil.
The second story is about the enduring romance of Jonny and Catriona, a spineless door-mat of a man and his utterly disgusting, horrifically common wife. They have a baby, but the odds are very high that it's not even his, and live in a squalid flat in the now-demolished tenement rows of Niddrie in Edinburgh. Life is miserable enough until Larry, a wacky, aggressive, hedonistic playboy moves in upstairs. Within moments he's taken a shine to Catriona and wastes no time taking over Jonny's life, who just lets it happen. Larry is one of the funniest, most realistic, characters I've ever seen in any movie and Gary McCormack plays him to absolute perfection. His impromptu musical number as he sings 'Hot Love' by T-Rex and Marc Bolan is just plain brilliant.
The third and final story features Colin 'Coco' Bryce, a Hibs casual who takes an acid tab and has a very, very bad trip, hallucinating his tyrannical father before being actually struck by lightning. When he comes to he is in the body of a newborn child to a middle class couple (played by Martin Clunes and Gemma Redgrave). The baby is in Coco's body, and Coco's gorgeous girlfriend Kirsty is taking full advantage of the situation by recreating him as her perfect man.
It's all very funny, highly surreal stuff. And despite the metamorphosis, body-swapping, magic, and a truly repugnant production design I can't help but find it an accurate depiction of Scottish life. Spend five minutes in a deprived area of this country (and believe me there is a lot of deprivation) and you'll encounter half of the cast of this film.
One of my favorite movies, and I am virtually word-perfect. There are many other stories in Welsh's collection that can be made into short movies. I wonder if we'll ever get a sequel. -
alexanderforrest24 April 2006This is really one of the worst movies i have seen in a while. It's not funny at all. It simply portrays a lower class Northern British setting. I find it a very sad film at parts, at others cuts are where they shouldn't be. One thing that really annoyed me was the close ups of pointless objects it really slowed down the pace of the movie. I only made it through the movie because i fast forwarded certain sequences towards the end.
This movie completely loses the attention of the audience. It's main problem is that it makes multiple reasons for one action, which in turn tends to weaken that action. However if there is one reason for one action it makes it more passionate. All in all this movie is all over the place. I didn't learn enough about the characters to care about them because of the shifting plot lines and stories where as i would have maybe enjoyed exploring the life of one character.
For example at the beginning when the guy meets God in the bar, God seems like a cool guy. The movie could've elaborated on that moment and I think it would've been a lot funnier.
Anyway, enough if's. Watch it if you want, but I'm warning you this film is crap. I respect the makers for trying to pull it off with such a low budget but they could've done a much better job. I guess it all lies in the camera movement and editing, the acting was decent. But then again, that's just my opinion. -
mcklennox22 July 2003Come on people did you really expect another trainspotting,the fact that it's not does not make it a bad movie.I thought the three stories were superbly adapted from the book(credit to paul mcguigan).To make the acid house so soon after trainspotting,with expectations so high the director was always on to a loser.
This is a film that is funny(in it's own disturbing,sick and wierd way)but also sad and at times totally realistic.As it's character based it does lack plot but the performances by the actors more than make up for that.So for those who have not seen this film,no it is not trainspotting.But keep an open mind and enjoy.
p.s glasgow is the real capital of scotland. -
ladulaser11 December 2001Ah, here it is! A movie, which is said by people to remind me of the epic "Trainspotting". OUCH, was I a fool to believe that, and OUCH, how my buttocks hurt after having forced myself to watch this c**p from beginning to end. After the first 10-15 minutes I just wanted it all to end, or at least they could've put some nudity or action or cool acid house music into it to make it worth the time... But no, when I was through with it, i put it into my CD shelf and I hope I will never have to pick it out again just to show it to some friend who is so anxious to see it that he/she don't want to listen to my warnings.