Self Medicated (R)By Roger Ebert
The opening scene in Monty Lapica's "Self-Medicated" is a particularly chilling exercise in antisocial behavior. A car filled with out-of-control teenagers cruises the Strip in Las Vegas, shooting at tourists with paint guns. This is the sort of behavior, like using laser pointers illegally, that you hope doesn't leak out to numbskulls at large. One of the kids is Andrew (played by Lapica himself), who is usually high on street drugs, allegedly because he mourns the death of his beloved father.
As most drug counselors will advise you, drug abuse has to be seen separately from the "problems" that "inspire" it. The majority of drunks and druggies use today because they used yesterday, and that's why they will use again tomorrow. I remember a guy in O'Rourke's who said he was drinking "because it's Christmas." Informed that it he had missed the mark by three days, he said, "OK, then, I'm drinking because it isn't Christmas."
Whatever his reasons, Andrew is out of control. He has walked out of school, he hates his pill-addicted mom (Diane Venora), and she can't get it together to really talk to him, let alone help him. So she makes a call and attendants from a "treatment center" pounce on him in the middle of the night and haul him away. This is staging an intervention big time.
The film, said to be somewhat autobiographical, is critical both of Andrew and his treatment. Unlike portrayals you may have seen of the wise and useful Betty Ford or Hazelden centers, this (fictional) outfit in St. George, Utah, treats its patients as prisoners, adopts a good cop/bad cop counseling regime and apparently plans to send patients to American Samoa to complete their "recovery" as forced labor. I am not making this up; it's inspired, I understand, by an actual treatment center, since shut down, although not the one Lapica attended.
The facility is more realistically portrayed than the one depicted in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," but this is a docudrama, not a fable. Andrew comes up against a counselor named Dan (Michael Bowen), who apparently loathes druggies and thinks his disgust will cure them. Another counselor, Keith (Greg Germann), has a kinder, gentler approach, but if Andrew hated school, it's nothing compared to how he feels about this place. As he checks in, he's already mentally escaping.
The title is a little misleading. Andrew and his mother are self-medicators, yes (her drugs are prescribed, but a middle-aged woman can often make that happen). But Andrew is also, in a way, self-treating. Alcoholics Anonymous, the most effective means of staying clean and sober, talks about "hitting bottom," and "Self-Medicated" plays like the story of Andrew throwing himself at the bottom, and sticking. Eventually, if he's not entirely around the bend, a light will dawn.
Helping him see the light is Gabe, a man who lives on the streets (William Stanford Davis). From the man who has been there, who has nothing and therefore nothing to lose, Andrew senses he is gaining insights without any motive or spin. The same strength sits at the center of an AA meeting, where everyone is in the same boat and there is no captain.
On the basis of this film, Monty Lapica, at 24, has a career ahead of him as a director, an actor or both. He also has a life ahead of him, which the film does a great deal to make clear.
http://tinyurl.com/2t53lz
Overwrought 'Self-Medicated' a tad hard to swallowBy Bob Strauss
MEDIANEWS STAFF
Article Launched: 08/31/2007 03:12:01 AM PDT
Monty Lapica's "Self-Medicated" has one really good thing going for it. The semi-autobiographical film in which the young writer-director also stars takes us inside a legally and medically questionable treatment facility for wayward youth and, in a persuasive but not too melodramatic way, exposes the abuses, absurdities and even some of the odd positive effects of such dubious institutions.
But that's about the only aspect of "Self-Medicated" that isn't overwrought. Or, for that matter, that's decently written and acted.
Andrew Eriksen, a bright, upper middle-class teenager, reacts to his father's death by partying too hard, letting his grades slip, getting into fistfights and randomly shooting pedestrians on the Las Vegas Strip with (gasp) paintballs.
Played by writer-director Lapica, who is only a few years older than the character but looks at least a decade too old for the part, Andrew also constantly argues with his pill-popping mom, Louise (Diane Venora). Hypocrisy aside, she's genuinely worried about her only child's behavior and hires the friendly folks from Brightway to kidnap and "treat" him.
While he's fairly honest about what's wrong with Andrew and, sometimes, displays a wicked sense of humor, Lapica is also prone to portraying his alter ego as smarter and more cunning than anyone who tries to mess with him. Emotionalism -- there's a whole lot of crying and talking to God/Daddy's angel -- is also heavily indulged. And speaking of angels, do we really need another humble, magical African-American (William Stanford Davis plays a homeless spirit, named Gabe no less) to give the troubled white boy a good talking to?
Everyone can relate to losing a beloved parent and losing one's way, and "Self-Medicated" will surely move some viewers with the power of its premise alone. Heartfelt it clearly is. Disciplined and focused on what's truly intriguing about the story, not so much.
'self-medicated'
C
http://www.mercurynews.com/movies/ci_6768879Passionate tale of rehabilitation hits homeBy Janice Page, Globe Correspondent | August 31, 2007
Since debuting at the CineVegas Film Festival in 2005, "Self-Medicated" has collected top prizes at competitive showings from Memphis to Rome. It reportedly scored the most awards (39) of any independent film in 2006, so it has more than earned its current theatrical release. But the bar set by all those accolades might not have done this spunky little audience-charmer any real favors.
Loosely spun from the real-life bio of first-time writer, director, and star Monty Lapica, "Self-Medicated" is the kind of super-earnest emotional effort that tends to pull high marks when filmmaking expectations are low. The blond and handsomely chiseled Lapica is a commanding presence on-screen - even if he's not one of those underdeveloped 24-year-olds who can convincingly play 17 - and his story of grief and self-loathing hits home no matter how many clichés it incorporates.
The filmmaker's big-screen alter ego is Andrew, a brilliant young man who is already in the midst of self-destructing when we catch up with him and his friends as they drive along the Las Vegas Strip, stoned and shooting at pedestrians with a paintball gun. Andrew's larger-than-life father has recently died, leaving the teen adrift and very tightly wound, with only his prescription-drug-addicted mother (Diane Venora) to look to as a role model.
When Andrew goes down one too many wrong side streets, his overwhelmed surviving parent has him committed to the kind of rehab facility that comes to your house to get you in the middle of the night. What follows is the kind of intense psychological drama movies love, with repressed baddies overseeing the wards and patients blurting out their tragic pasts in group therapy session after group therapy session.
Lapica plays at satirizing the stereotypes, but his weak shots are almost as forced and obvious as the conventions they mock. Plus, not to make light of anyone's private hell but . . . it's hard to label this journey "harrowing" when the clinic's primary form of torture is essay writing.
Still, Lapica's debut impresses with its strong, clear voice and desire to tell a very personal story not just of substance abuse but of that abuse's painful root cause. It isn't a broad and gritty drug tale like "Requiem for a Dream," but it doesn't seem designed to be, either. "Self-Medicated" is basically an underage soap opera with a conscience and better-than-average style, the latter thanks in part to Denis Maloney's moody cinematography and Anthony Marinelli's sullen background music.
It's worth noting that the movie's spiritual underpinnings are sometimes fairly subtle and other times veer into "Touched by an Angel" territory. The third act is downright Bible-thumping. But even atheists stand to be moved by the sincerity of it, particularly for a film with so many curse words.
Janice Page can be reached at
http://tinyurl.com/2vjbztThe writer/director/star must have been out of his mind to make thisBy BILL WHITE
SPECIAL TO THE P-I
While it is unfortunate that Monty Lapica had to live through the events portrayed in "Self Medicated," it is even more unfortunate that he felt compelled not only to write and direct a film based on those events but to star in it as well.
Suffering from depression in the wake of his father's death, Andrew Erikson (Lapica) develops an anti-social streak. After one too many incidents with school authorities and the police, his mother commits him to Brightway, a teen hospital that practices "coercive persuasion."
Even a credible 24-year-old actor would have difficulty playing a high school kid, and Lapica has zero credibility. He conveys anguish by closing his eyes and imagining himself as James Dean. For the more demonstrative scenes, he summons his emotive memory and throws a tantrum. He directs the rest of the cast as poorly as he directs himself. Even the venerable Diane Venora, as Andrew's pill-popping couch-potato mother, fails to turn in a decent performance.
Michael Bowen and Greg Germann play the Brightway counselors as smug and dangerous imbeciles, yet the script intermittently implies that Andrew could benefit from their treatment. The script's vacillation between a maudlin sympathy for the patients and a moral condemnation of their delinquent acts is one of the film's many problems.
Lapica's indictment of patient abuse at the Brightway Adolescent Hospital is weak, especially in view of charges brought against its real-life founder, Robert Lichfield. Punishments such as having to write essays of self-condemnation and being forced to stand for an hour in a small cell seem fairly trivial when compared with the allegations of psychic, physical and sexual abuse at Brightway.
Before the movie reaches its climax, it has created a mess that requires divine intervention. So Lapica calls in the angel Gabriel to deliver God's message to Andrew, the essence of which is to be kind to his mother. As the credits roll, you may wonder if you have just seen a "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" for sadistic Protestants or the most wholesome movie about juvenile delinquency since "The Cross and the Switchblade."
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/movies/32 ... lf31q.html
Drama ODs on its indie quirksBy James Verniere
Boston Herald Film Critic
Friday, August 31, 2007
While young writer-director Monty Lapica deserves full marks for getting this 2005 film made, “Self-Medicatedâ€
