AllMovie

A dramatic movie centering on either tragic or unsympathetic characters grappling with their addictions to drugs and/or alcohol. While some films present the use of drug and alcohol humorously (the Cheech and Chong films) or as a part of the normal adolescent experience (Dazed and Confused), addiction is the socially preferred topic of many filmmakers trying to tackle this issue. Instead of detailing the complex reasons why characters use drugs and alcohol in the first place, most of these movies focus on the dangerous results and tragic aftermath of their use. These include loss of job, family, lover(s), friends and, eventually, mental health. The conclusion is often one of two stock endings: the characters either seek treatment, overcome their addiction and begin restoring their lives, or they face death, imprisonment or alienation due to repeated use. Often these films sermonize and preach heavy-handedly and drip with melodramatic conventions such as scenes of physical and mental abuse, overblown musical scores, torturous withdrawal sequences and numerous soliloquies. Though most of these films sprung from the Just Say No era of the ‘80s, several Hollywood films dealt with addiction with more realism in the ‘50s and ‘60s, like The Man With the Golden Arm, A Hatful of Rain, The Lost Weekend and Days of Wine and Roses. During the late ‘60s and throughout the ‘70s, drugs were either cinematically presented as a part of life (Easy Rider) or as a social problem intended for the cops to stop -- though Panic in Needle Park and The Connection were part of a brief, artistically strong drug-abuse movement in the early ‘70s. Anti-drug moralizing arrived in the ‘80s with weepies like Clean and Sober, The Boost, Bright Lights, Big City and continued into the ‘90s with Rush and When a Man Loves a Woman. More complex films like Drugstore Cowboy, Christine F., Light Sleeper, Trainspotting, Leaving Las Vegas and Barfly didn't lecture or handle addiction as a simplistic, cut-and-dry TV-movie-of-the-week issue. Also included in this subgenre are fictionalized chronicles of celebrities and artists succumbing to addiction such as Bird, The Basketball Diaries, Lenny, Naked Lunch, and Wired.