Writer/director Pamela Romanowsky's adaptation of "The Adderall Diaries" based on Stephen Elliott's memoir has so many great ideas. It's a blend of different genres that calls back to many different films from the past however, it's unfocused execution and narrative ultimately leaves you bewildered rather than intrigued.

Starring Academy Award nominee James Franco as Stephen Elliott, an author whose world is turned upside down when his estranged father (played by Ed Harris) accuses him in public of fabricating his book which tells the story of his life. With a new relationship, drug relapse, and focusing on a very public murder trial, will Stephen be able to survive everything that life is throwing at him?

As previously mentioned, there's A LOT going on in the story. We're getting elements of "Shattered Glass" then "Blue Valentine" then "The Basketball Diaries." Romanowsky isn't confident about what she wants her film to be. Does she want it to be a film about family relationships or dissection of the mind of an addict? Does she want to explore the ramifications of sex through violence or is she trying to make a statement about the perception of our lives within ourselves? She's saying so many things that it all ends up on blurred lines and in a haze. I will say that her abilities is a filmmaker is nothing to scoff at. She creates genuine moments and settles into her better written scenes with courage and ferocity. I'd still be very intrigued to see her next venture.

James Franco's resume with independent cinema has left much to be desired. His performances are often self-indulgent or misguided by his own direction or any other filmmaker he's working with. His turn in "The Adderall Diaries" is one of his more impressive works that he's constructed as of late. Though his motivations and actions aren't always made abundantly clear, Franco sheds some of his barriers to allow some connection with his audience.

You can't get much better than Ed Harris in terms of an actor that shines in just about anything he does, no matter how the film he inhabits turns out. As Neil, Stephen's father, Harris elevates the thin material and focuses on the emotion of a father's regret with near precision. I'm still anxiously awaiting his Oscar-winning role. This doesn't quite make the cut.

Other aspects of the film include the beautiful Amber Heard, the multi-talented Cynthia Nixon, the oddly involved Christian Slater, and the scene-stealing abilities of Jim Parrack (Hoyt from "True Blood").

Overall "The Adderall Diaries" is a misguided attempt by a director who has a keen eye for some things but lacks in others. Romanowsky's guidance on her actors are some of the film's biggest highlights but ultimately just falls short in too many spots. The opening sequence was quite good and there was a scene in which I nearly cried. Some may find some qualities to take home with them, others will simply leave it at the door.

Based on the book by Stephen Elliot by the same name, now although I haven't read it I assume that that did better at putting all the material together than the movie did.

There are some standalone scenes that are pretty solid but there's also some questionable ones that feels a bit random.

It's listed here as a crime/drama/thriller, but the crime elements is very limited and thriller even more so There is a subplot about a random murder-case involving a character played by Christian Slater but it doesn't have that big of importance in the long scheme of things, at least the movie didn't manage to convey it as it did.

The movie is about memories and perceptions of reality and how that can change in time.

The message and idea behind the movie is pretty clever and the acting is pretty good (save for maybe Amber Heard who feels a bit empty) and it's decent enough visually but for some reason it just doesn't quiet work as a whole.

This movie is journey about coming to terms with who you are and how you became that person.

The enigmatic Franco plays a deeply troubled writer who is trying to come to terms with his traumatic past and the heartbreakingly tumultuous relationship he had with his father. Along the way, he meets the beautiful Amber Heard. This is why I did not give the movie more stars. If it was the writers intent to portray her as damaged as he was, it was an epic fail. She came across as strong and self-assured -almost cocky at times - not what you would expect from someone reeling from childhood trauma. It was no fault of Heard's - her character was just badly written. Ed Harris rocks the screen, as usual, as the domineering father who haunts his dreams and creates the clouds of his past that he can't see through.

The mind is amazing - we can do all sorts of things to protect ourselves. The ability to alter our memories is only one tool of many. This one is worth your time.

This film tells the story of a young writer who wrote a book about his troubled relationship with his father, and the abuse he had to endure over the years. The sudden appearance of his father in the book launch party raises doubts on his claims in the book.

The story is good because it draws viewers in to both sides of the coin. Initially I am so convinced that Stephen is the victim, yet as the story unfolds we get to know how things may not be as it seems. The revelation that memories can be distorted, but we never question our own memories is quite a strong argument, and many of us can relate to that. It is an introspective and revelatory journey for Stephen, but I can relate to it as well.

Given the Title, Adderall (focus driven medication prescribed for ADHD and narcolepsy), it's only mentioned as a "Catch-All" for Drug Addiction.

James Franco is getting to the Point where No One can take Him Seriously anymore. So Overexposed and with Limited Ability to Transcend His Own Personality, He gives Performance after Performance Playing Himself.

A Best Selling Memoir from Author Stephen Elliott is the Source Material. The Plot of the Movie Explores Memory Confabulation. It's a Heady Affair that Lacks Focus. It Rambles with Borderline Incoherence Dealing with so many Profound Subjects that most of it is Lost in the Translation of Clichéd Sex and Drug Behavior Attempting to be "Indie-Edgy" with Sadomasochism.

Nothing is Drawn from the Personality Disorders or Family Dysfunction beyond "True Crime" Motivations and to be frank, not much is Realized even there.

A Mess of a Movie with Ed Harris Overacting to Burn Up the Screen with Hidden Clues about what Really Happened. In the End it is Doubtful You will Care. The Main Problem in the Movie is its Ambition to Group Dysfunction, Addiction, and Mental Illness into a Pot and Stir. The Cinematic Stew, Unfortunately is Tasteless and no where Near Fulfilling or Satisfying.

"A father does what he has to do to protect his children." Stephen Elliott (Franco) is a successful writer who is going through a bout of writers block. He begins to find inspiration in a court case involving the murder of a woman by her husband. The trial begins to drag up painful memories of his own past and living with his father Neil (Harris). When Neil once again shows up Stephen begins to spiral and it effects every aspect of his life. This is a strange movie. The acting is great, as expected but the idea is a little generic and overused. The thing that really keeps the movie from being too cookie cutter are the actors. Franco does a great job playing the tortured soul, Heard is great as the confused girlfriend and Harris, as always, steals the movie and plays his part so perfect that you aren't sure if he is really as bad as Elliott portrays him. All that said this is a a decent movie but nothing to rush and see. Overall, great acting and casting really makes this movie better than it could have been. Worth a rent. I give this a B-.

After hearing about (but not reading) the book I was a little excited for this film. Terrible let down. There is no real plot or even a narrative and I can't for the life of me understand why this gets placed under the Thriller genre. It is little more than a plodding collection of vignettes strung together with an inordinate number of slow-motion flashbacks. Seriously if just the flashbacks and montages were shown in realtime it would cut the runtime of this movie by half. Want to convey a memory of a happy family? Slow motion flashback of them kicking a ball in the yard. Angry family? Slow motion flashback of them yelling and punching. Repeat this over and over to fill the space where plot and character development would go.

The "trial" component feels forced as an unnecessary element (maybe to convince us it's a thriller?). There isn't one relationship in this movie we ever actually care about and, as if to add insult to injury, the star seems to magically reconcile a lifetime of bad choices in the last ten minutes! Too bad this was a really bad vehicle for some otherwise good talent.

This was a pretty good turn for Franco, one of his best attempts at drama in indi cinema.

Franco is the protagonist, a writer who wrote a great book about his broken childhood, and the relationship with his abusive father, but it comes to life that what he's passing off as truth may not be all that, and he tries to redeem his career with a new book about a True Crime, evolving a father (played by Christian Slater, who I have not scene in forever) whose on trail for the murder of his wife.

It's an Intriguing story about how sometimes we remember things differently than they actually happen. James Franco played this role well. It was not a matter of weather he was right or wrong, but just a matter of how he saw things that was not entirely accurate.

Ed Harris and Franco had some really good scenes together as well. Harris played the abusive father who, like his son, remembers events differently. The father son connection felt very realistic.

This is not the first time Franco has done a film on Child abuse (also not the fist time Amber Heard played an ex-punk rock bases with a few issues, she also did it in the recent but horrible film One More Time). Franco also tackled the trouble youth Topic in the film Yosemite, but that movie was a little more serious while this one is definitely better done.

I can recommend.

"The Adderall Diaries" (2015 release; running time: 90 min.) brings the story of how Stephen Elliott (played by James Franco) deals with his distant past and also some current setbacks. As the movie opens, we see grainy video footage of a seemingly happy family. We then move to today, where Elliot gets the good news that Penguin has accepted a book proposal. In a parallel story, Elliot gets interested in a murder case (software engineer, played by Christian Slater, "disappears" his wife), and at the trial, Elliot makes the acquaintance of Lana, a NY Times reporter (played by Amber Heard. To tell you more might spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.

Couple of comments: this is the feature length debut of writer-director Pamela Romanowsky, who was handpicked by James Franco himself for this job. The movie is based on the Stephen Elliot book of the same name. I have not read the book so I cannot compare how closely (or not) the movie is to the book. I had high expectations going in for this movie. Oh boy, what a disappointment this turned out to be, and I'm being mild. It takes a little while to figure out what is going on, but when it finally start to male sense, I waited to get transfixed. I waited, and waited.... Meanwhile, we see poor James Franco playing the tormented writer, struggling with writers block, and his horrible past, and it all feels so... acted!. We watch, and it does nothing for us. Thankfully there is Amber Heard, always easy on the eyes (and reason I don't give the movie just one star). Ed Harris (as Elliott's dad) and Christian Slater do the best they can with the material they are given, meaning not a whole lot. PLEASE NOTE: the running time is listed here on IMDb, Amazon and other places as being 105 min., but I can categorically tell you that the version I saw today was at most 90 min. Maybe the 105 min. refers to what was shown as the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival, where this movie premiered. Yes, a year ago. Also, it turns out that Stephen Elliott himself has disavowed the movie.

The movie opened today out of the blue without any pre-release advertising or fanfare at my local art-house theater here in Cincinnati. The early evening screening where I saw this at was not well attended, and I'm being mild (4 people, including myself). I can't imagine this will play in the theater more than a week. There is a reason this movie currently scores only 20 on Rotten Tomatoes: it's a pretty bad movie, in fact one of the worst I've seen in quite a while (and I see a lot of movies). Unless you are a die-hard fan of James Franco or Amber Heard, there is no reason at all to waste 90 or 105 min. on this. I'm sorry that I watched this movie, but that doesn't mean you have to.... Viewer beware!

If you are thinking about watching this movie in 2020 or later, I assume it is because you discovered the amazing Timotheé Chalamet and are working your way through his films. I would say it is kind of worth the watch. It is not much of a commitment, the film is only an hour and a half. Chalamet has only one or two lines but is on screen every now and then for flashbacks for few seconds at a time and shines in his brief appearances. (What a great casting choice for his talent of course but also because it is fully believable that he is a young James Franco). The story is kind of interesting, it has some insights into unreliable narrative, trauma and drug use, playing the victim and not taking responsibility. I did feel however that the movie could have been better. The story line of the murder trial wasn't working for me. I liked Lena and Steven's relationship but she all of a sudden couldn't handle him anymore and was angry at him, which was too abrupt. All in all, flawed but still a good movie.

Review: When I first read the plot of this movie, and saw the cast, I had big expectations for this film but it turned out to be a big let down. The pace was really slow and the different elements were far apart. You have this father and son element between Stephen Elliott (James Franco) and Neil Elliott (Ed Harris), about there troubled relationship mixed with drugs and violence, and then you have this murder case, about Hans Reiser (Christian Slater), who was accused of killing his wife. You've also got a love story between Stephen, whose an inspiring writer, and Lana Edmond (Amber Heard) who is a reporter for the murder case but that doesn't really go anywhere. I personally lost interest very early in the film because the plot was all over the place and the director concentrated on trivia matters. The performances wasn't bad from Franco, Harris and Heard but I have seen better from these experienced actors. I didn't really understand what point the director was trying to get across, because the ending was pretty poor and James Franco's character just became uninteresting. Basically the film was a bit let down and I struggled to keep my eyes open through the whole movie. Disappointing!

Round-Up: This movie was directed by Pamela Romanowsky, who also brought you Forever Love in 2012, which was also unheard of. She is due to release a movie starring James Franco, Pamela Anderson, Josh Duhamel, Topher Grace, Eric Roberts, Tim Blake Nelson and Lori Singer, called The Institute, which is due out next year but I haven't got high hopes for the film, because this film was such a big let down. You can tell that she hasn't got much experience behind the camera because the different elements that she was introducing, just didn't gel that well and she didn't get the most out of the actors. There was to much time wasted on sex scenes and flashbacks which the whole project could have done without. Anyway, I expected more from Franco and Harris but I doubt that this will damage there impressive reputations.

I recommend this movie to people who are into their crime/drama/thrillers starring James Franco, Christian Slater, Ed Harris, Amber Heard, Jim Parrack and Cynthia Nixon. 2/10

The film is about personal perspective and how far we can delude ourselves about who we are and the events which created us. For such a tricky topic, I thought they did an excellent job. The catalysts and personal revelations were believable, and I found the pacing exactly right for this type of film.

With each scene, the film both offers us information about the characters and invites us to question what we've been told. Finely nuanced contradictions kept me fascinated, waiting for explanations. When answers were presented, they were satisfying but also left me with the understanding that the story was far more complex than we could ever know, that truth was still and would always be subjective, and that the question of who are the villains and who are the victims could only be answered: "All of us."

I don't know that it will appeal to everyone, but if you're a fan of psychological dramas (not thriller, just drama), you will likely enjoy this as much as I did.

Beware of the resulting soul-searching you might experience about who are the heroes and monsters in your own life story.

Books on fiction and even more so autobiographical memoirs are always edited, self edited if you prefer. Even the most brutally frank of memoirs there is always a part so painful we don't want to tell the world and we hope that no one else is keeping track to tell it differently. That's what happens to James Franco on another of his quirky projects playing a writer who does his Adderall like peppermint candy.

Franco is covering the trial of wife killer Christian Slater and as the testimony rolls he sees some of his own life especially in his relationship with his estranged father Ed Harris who sees the same incidents and others he prefers to remember a bit differently. Franco and Harris have some great scenes together they are the heart of the film.

Editing our memories is the phenomenon this film chose to explore. If not the best of explanations it's a valiant attempt.

I didn't expect to like this movie (I'm not a Franco fan. Sorry, James.). I almost didn't watch it because of its overall low rating here. I'm glad I did, though, because it was raw, well acted & had a meaningful message. It made me reflect. In a good way. This film is underrated.

I wanted to like this movie, but I found it really hard trying to keep up with what was going on. It didn't seem like James Franco really sold his character very well and that may be more due to editing than his acting abilities. The story is not smooth and tries to bring in too many elements to tell this tale. It doesn't give you time to really bond with the characters and their feelings or their struggle. You are introduced to the characters and after it just goes all over the place.

The story is about a young man who is a writing who writes telling his story of his abuse. His story comes into question and his life spirals from there. Again, if they spent a bit more time introducing who he is and was with some back-story beforehand, then this film would have been better executed. From my take, it was a butchered mess of a film with not much context.

The Adderall Diaries, Stephen's (James Franco) first book is called A" Part" but while it bears a different title, it's clearly just a substitute for "A Life Without Consequences", and it's those details that dismantle and nearly destroy Stephen, riding high on his success, when their lack of veracity is revealed. The Adderall Diaries is a tough film and has several different elements and subplots within the story. It may feel clustered at once, but the film is quite interesting for those reasons. There appears to be much happening, and although it is well acted, it does not feel forced in any way. The film really does a good job of its flashback scenes, where Franco and Ed Harris (playing his father) tell their point of views of how they lived going up. These flashbacks are constantly brought up and shown, and they play an important part within the end. Amber Heard does a solid job playing Franco's love interest. The film is quite short, at 87 minutes. Perhaps they could have developed the story a little more, though the film is quite good and worth a watch.

But some of the acting was cringe worthy, you need more then a pretty face to master the art of acting, I will not name names, you need to see for your self.

A screwed-up family, a screwed-up life, and the self-destruction of the future due to the need to consume drugs. But, it's the family that saves tomorrow. A better film than the ratings indicate.

Great cast! Story was uneven and quite frankly boring at times. I'll watch Ed Harris in anything.

That storyline was incredibly boring. Did Ed Harris need the money? Did he lose a bet and had to work with those D-list co stars? It was filmed really well and the locations were great but it was a waste of time. Thank god it was free on a streaming service. If I had wasted money in a theater I would have been mad.