These are important stories that should be seen, but audiences need more than scripts that are primarily acting exercises, with very little insight beyond everyone blaming everyone else and reminders that bad choices by addicts and those around them lead to bad outcomes.Erin Moran arrives at the Fox Reality Channel Really Awards in Los Angeles in 2008.Įrin Moran, best known for playing Joanie Cunningham on the 1970s sitcom, Happy Days, is dead at age 56. begs his father for another chance has more insight, heartbreak, authenticity, and dramatic weight than this feature-length film. A brief scene in " Less Than Zero" where Robert Downey, Jr. The film is weaker when it falls into heavy-handed metaphors like the uncompleted jigsaw puzzle and the colloquial use of "addiction" to try to place binge-watching the news in the same category as substance abuse. And Kunis shows great sensitivity in portraying Molly's layers and conflicts, from the near-feral ability to manipulate, always sensing whether it is time to lie or to accuse, to the searing pain of the addiction/self-loathing hamster wheel, where "life is a trigger" and it seems the only way to bear the pain and loss and shame of addiction is to keep getting high. Close, for the second time in a year playing the mother of an addict is fine as always, especially when expressing the deep conflicts of a mother who cannot bear the thought of continuing to love her daughter or finding a way to stop. As in the superior, under-seen "Ben is Back," we learn that the addiction began with carelessly prescribed opioid painkillers for an injury as a teenager.īut the performances, including Stephen Root as Deb's second husband and Joshua Leonard as Molly's ex-husband, far exceed the formulaic quality of the script. Molly's ex-husband brings their children for a visit and we get a glimpse of the life she could have had. There are some affecting moments, as when Deb, an esthetician at a local casino, gives a facial to Molly, her tender touch conveying the unconditional love she cannot allow herself to say in words. The movie takes on some of the elements of a thriller when each minute is filled with suspense or a horror film when a character who was once most endearing becomes someone who inspires dread and terror.
Deb agrees to let Molly come home to help her-and so she can keep an eye on Molly. But in order to get the shot she has to stay clean for four more days. Three days later, the drugs are out of Molly's system and a doctor makes her an offer, a monthly shot that blocks the effect of opioids. But only Deb remembers the exact number of times Molly has been through detox: 14.
That's my one glimmer of hope in all of this." At the hospital, it is clear they have been through it so many times they know the routine. "If there's anything more f-ing relentless than heroin, it's you. And the next day, when the drugs have worn off, she agrees to have Deb take her to detox. "We changed the locks after you and Eric stole the guitars." But Molly will not leave. But hope always pushes to try again, even when experience has shown us it will only break our heart.ĭeb does not let her inside the house. "Whenever I've decided to engage with her it's always been with my eyes open," she says. She has been lied to so much and stolen from so often she believes that it is best for Molly if those around her can impose firm boundaries. Molly's mother Deb ( Glenn Close) leans out of the door, her stillness in contrast to Molly's hopped-up shifts of tone. We speak of "tough love." And so, when Molly ( Mila Kunis), a strung-out addict who has been through rehab and relapsed more than a dozen times, shows up at her mother's house, instead of a warm welcome, she is turned away. The word "love" may not get re-calibrated for addiction, but it gets modified.