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Special - Specioprin Hydrochloride

4/10

Stars: Michael Rapaport, Paul Blackthorne, Josh Peck

Director: Hal Haberman, Jeremy Passmore

Comic-book fan Les (Rapaport), depressed by his job as a traffic warden, takes the eponymous experimental pills to improve his self-esteem.

They have an unforeseen side effect in that he imagines himself to have super-powers, and goes around crashing into anyone he imagines is about to hold up a convenience store or snatch an old lady's purse. Occasionally, Les is right. Mostly, alas, he's wrong, and the directors of the pill company become anxious to get him off the streets.

Or is all this, like being able to float off the ground and walk through walls, really in his imagination? Naturally, the film blurs the lines between fantasy and reality before the end.

This is a funny-sad little anecdote, but too long even at this runtime, with a very protracted ending. Rapaport gives it his best shot and, as the pill company supremo, Paul Blackthorne is an interesting newish face pitched somewhere between Chazz Palminteri and Jack Elam.

David Quinlan

USA 2006. UK Distributor: Revolver. Colour by FotoKem.
81 minutes. Not widescreen. UK certificate: 15.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 0, Violence/Horror 1, Drugs 1, Swearing 1.

Review date: 11 Nov 2006