- The voiceover. The fucking voiceover was the first thing I reacted violently to in the movie. I thought the visuals of the first scene were quite interesting, and by themselves would have been a catchy intro to the movie - but the voiceover completely killed it, along with every other scene it was in. When I'm in a movie, I don't need to be told the theme of the movie in the first 3 minutes or I won't be surprised by the development of the movie - the journey of the characters through the plot. What Trainspotting did was explicitly say, in the voiceover, how all these heroin addicts were choosing a fix over "life," and, of course, the last line of the voiceover at the end of the movie was Ewan McGregor saying "I choose life." Now, my question is: shouldn't I, as an intelligent audience member, be able to see that he chooses life by the actions he takes in the movie without the need for a voiceover to enlighten me? Apparently not...
- The plotline. I don't even know what to say about the plot except that it was didn't go anywhere, it was confusing and even disjunct at several places, and OH WAIT nothing happens. Literally I spent 3/4 of the movie wondering to myself, "Why am I watching this? What about this situation is important for the characters?" Of course, throwing in a dead baby and a tough withdrawal provided McGregor with obstacles to fight against, but I didn't see how he grew from those struggles at all. In the end, the big thing that everything was leading up to was Ewan McGregor stealing money from his friends, which he does in the entire movie anyways, so at the end I was quite angry at feeling like I had just watched an hour and a half of nothingness.
- The subject matter. Trainspotting is basically a comedy of heroin addicts - a funny version of Requiem for a Dream. Except nothing about Requiem is funny... at all. It is the single most depressing movie I have ever seen, because it deals honestly and appropriately with its subject matter. Now, I'm not totally against the idea of a comedy based on heroin addicts - I think Tarantino did a damn good job making a comedy out of killing Nazis in Inglorious Basterds, to make some kind of a connection with dark comedies - but heroin addiction is a serious matter that must be dealt with just as honestly as Requiem did it. As Matt says, assume at least 10% (20%?) of the audience has had direct experience with the subject matter. I don't have any experience with heroin addicts, but I can at least tell you that in most of the scenes I didn't care about Ewan McGregor's struggles. Which brings me to my final point...
- The acting. Once again, I have difficulties seeing where the problems with the script end and the problems with the acting begin. I don't think Ewan McGregor is a terrible actor, but his performance felt "acted," probably because if he had dealt with his addiction honestly it would not have been a comedy. The other characters were generally unmemorable, except for Begbie - Robert Carlyle's depiction of a hard-ass fighter was fun to watch. If the other supporting characters (Sick Boy, Spud, Tommy) had been as well defined and as clearly acted as Begbie, perhaps there would have been some interesting ensemble relationships developing through the course of the movie - but I couldn't really keep track of who was who, let alone what kind of a character they were.
In all, I'm glad I saw Trainspotting because I learned the problems with the overuse of voiceover, the need to have an engaging and well-paced script, and the problem with not dealing with the subject matter appropriately. But I still wish I had that 90 minutes of my life back.
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