Don't Waste Your Time.

I certainly respect your opinion my friend, but I have to disagree. This movie is not "post-Tarantino". It was based on a book by Denis Johnson written long before anybody had heard of Quentin Tarantino. Besides, Tarantino movies are derived entirely from other movies while this movie was obviously based heavily on real life. I also wouldn't necessarily call it a drug movie (it's more just an early 70's movie). It does have drug scenes in it, but it's not a preachy, two-hour anti-drug commercial like "Basketball Diaries" (although it does resemble the original Jim Carroll book). On the other hand, it doesn't irresponsibly glamorize drug use like "Trainspotting" tends to. And it's a lot less melodramatic than "Requiem for a Dream" (although that's a good movie too). The truth is drug use is sometimes tragic such as when young people OD, but often it is just repetitive and boring. Most people don't OD or become prostitutes or criminals, drug use just slowly eats up their lives.

There's also something kind of sweet and hopeful in this movie that goes beyond hip, ironic gangsters or screaming, agonized drug addicts. I quit using drugs over ten years ago (and I was well beyond being just a loveable pothead at that point) and I still enjoy watching this movie because it is just very real and honest.

feltchbm... someone likes to hear themselves blab on forever...

"Yesterday, I saw you kissing tiny flowers..." - Led Zeppelin.

"I wanted to do drugs way worse after watching this movie than I did after watching Requiem for a Dream, Trainspotting, or Basketball Diaries."

i don't think it was created as an moral argument against drugs. i loved that instead of a plain, linear narrative, it's a set of character studies that tell you so much about these people. there happen to be some drugs in it. it's not a long string of shooting-up scenes. it's the kind of movie that isn't ruined by you knowing what happens in the end, because the enjoyment comes from watching these people living and bouncing off each other, not from finding out who gets off drugs and who dies.

"The narrator is a burnout so, SUPRISE!, the story is told nonsequentially with him backtracking to fill in holes and blah blah blah. I'm getting so sick of the Post-Pulp Fiction Rip-offathon."

i loved that. forget tarantino [much as i love him]. it's not about clever plot twists or deceiving the viewer. i thought the narration was very human. so many times i've listened to people trying to tell a story about something real that happened to them - not a neat little narrative with a start, middle and end - that's not often how life works - people hit tangents & get carried away with a point they're on and forget to explain how that point came about.

this movie hit that PERFECTLY. this guy's no writer, fleshing out a narrative neatly - he's a kinda idiot savant, amiable but not the sharpest tool in the box - and the narration is written to let him tell his story the way he knows how. it's real, and it's achingly funny because of that.

and shock horror, a junkie who doesn't go on dramatic crime sprees to fund his addiction - who'da thunk it? i've met people like this. lots of us have. this guy is real. i don't want to watch a movie about some perfect, boring non-character - nor about someone deeply villainous who by the grace of god or their own self-sufficiency, sees the error of their ways, and becomes a sanctimonious model citizen - it's been done, and life very rarely works like that! unless i'm looking for pure escapism, i watch movies to see people that could be real, stories that really could have happened.

you're right, jack black is amazing. so is dennis leary. and because the film doesn't just depend on a straightforward storyline, you can pick up at a scene here or there, like their scenes, and just watch that if you feel like it, and enjoy it enormously. there are so few films with the ability to let you do that.

i bought this the other day, just on a whim, and have watched it 3 times since then. i'm amazed by it, and have frantically recommended it to everyone i know.

xxx

I'm really very surprised that you disliked this film so much. All of the other movies that you named (Trainspotting, Requiem for a Dream, Basketball Diaries) were very good but also incredibly unfunny and depressing. I thought that Jesus' Son worked terrificly as an ultra-dark comedy.


Kelly
http://www.DietFacts.com

The point is that people are addicted to drugs.
We do get old.
People are shuffled out of your sight.
This movie is poignant, sad, and hilarious.
Don't be afraid to think how others might live.
I loved this movie.

You know that Quentin Tarantino didn't invent non-linear narratives, don't you?

People your letting the drug usage blind you. When you live like that the drugs fade away during the day just like eating or using the bathroom. Read between the lines. We'll all float on.

Compared to the dreck that Hollywood is putting out these days, I found "Jesus' Son" to be engaging and thought-provoking. I suggest, however, if you want to watch Disney, that you stick to Disney with all happy flowers and singing elephants and stay away from the edge of cinema. There is a real side of the world and that includes dirty fingernails and big kids in adults bodies - in fact, it seems that Billy Crudup likes scripts that deal with that aspect (see "Big Fish"). As much as you would like to keep harsh reality at arms' length, however, it's still out there. Who wants to watch movies about characters like this? Lots of folks. The larger theme of this movie is compassion, and no matter how much one sugar-coats the world, no amount of revisionist history can hide the fact that Pocahontas wasn't built like Barbie (she was, by today's standards, really ugly) and Aladdin probably didn't have Anglo-Saxon features or a talking monkey. (I find it equally ridiculous and strange that such a Christian-right-leaning studio like Disney adapts a heathen story stolen from the "Arabian Nights".)

I thought JS was great. Warts and all.