Candy Reviews

Dan and Candy are in love with each other as well as heroin. They lead unhealthy lifestyles and Candy begins to lose focus on her art and things begin to spiral out of control. Dan and Candy try to get things straight but the drugs just keep getting in the way of their happiness.

The toughest part about watching a film with such powerful scenes is that you have this uneasy feeling that the final striking vision of the film will not leave you with joy, instead it will leave you realizing how harsh reality can be on people who have tried their best and came up empty handed. Candy and Dan were not bad people; they went about making money the wrong way and found themselves living fast with no way of paying for their lifestyle. You watch these lives unfold on the screen and you realize that a solid film is not just actors strutting their stuff and looking cool, but it is about reaching deep within and making people realize reality is not the perfect world where everything is calm and people live free without concerns.

Candy: Once upon a time, there was a Candy and Dan... Things were very hot that year... All the wax was melting on the trees... He would crawl on balconies, climb everywhere. Do anything for her... My Danny boy. Thousands of birds. The tiniest birds adorned her hair... Everything was golden... One night the bed caught fire... He was handsome, and a very good criminal... We lived on sunlight and chocolate bars... It was the afternoon of extravagant delight... Danny, the Daredevil... Candy the blessing... The day's last rays of sunshine cruise like sharks..."I wanna try it your way this time!" You came into my life really fast, and I liked it. We squelched in the mud of our joy. I was wet thighed with the surrender... Then there was a gap in things... And the whole earth tilted... This is the business. This is what we're after. With you inside me... Comes the night...


Heath and Abbie were able to take these characters, and paint a picture with their lives. They create Candy and Dan as people, sad people looking to find their way, people who need that extra push to better themselves. Candy and Dan were searching for joy and freedom and they found that in drugs. As time went on they needed to find solace from the drugs, which meant being away from each other, even though through the toughest and darkest of hours they still loved each other. Both Heath and Abbie were able to challenge each other in the most dramatic of scenes, they were able to feed of each others passion for acting, and turn Candy from just another flick about drugs to a sad tale that will resonate with the audience long after they watch the film. Heath and Abbie leave you realizing that actors who create rich and diverse characters are also showing us another world, one that we perhaps do not know a lot about. Film in general is meant to do this, and films that go for blunt messages or direct visuals are much more appealing because you can clearly feel how awkward or how tense a situation is.

Dan: We had a lot going for us. We'd found the secret glue that held all things together. In a perfect place, where the noise did not intrude, our world was so very complete.


Candy is a love story, but not the typical boy meets girl falls and love and they run around falling head over heels in love, and then get married and live happily. Candy and Dan were in love, a love that had its ups and downs and realistically ended on a sad note. Candy and Dan were never going to change, never going to push each other towards a healthy lifestyle. They were addicted to living that lifestyle together. They built this world for themselves, and they could not bend the mold, and change their lives. There is so much in this film that makes this film such a sad film to watch. There are scenes that are designed to make us feel for these characters, to make us see how badly they have messed up their own lives and the lives of those around them. Yet perhaps the most telling and heart breaking scenes are the ones where Candy and Dan are laughing and enjoying each other, because you get a glimpse of how they could have made it work under different circumstances. They could have made it work had they made different choices along the way.


Casper: When you can stop, you don't want to. When you want to stop, you can't.

The next time I will say that I do not like drama and watch them very often ... But then again I admit that this genre often conceals an abyss of reality, meaning and causes reflection. And "Candy" is just one of those movies.

Films about drug addicts is not uncommon and there can recall a lot of examples, ranging from the comedy "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle" and ending with the drama "Requiem for a Dream." And "Candy" is just very similar to the well-known film directed by Darren Aronofsky. "Candy" - it is also a film-warning, the film that shows the whole world of drugs and makes the viewer think again: And it do I need?

In the picture is the correct structure - it is divided into parts, but with the strict separation as such no, but the word "Paradise", "Land", "Hell" delimiting the story very clearly describe the state of the main characters of the film and what happens to them.

The picture is very real - watched the movie and sometimes it seemed that he looked in your own mirror, looking at what is happening in the streets, Bardel, parks, watching the passers-by and looked inside the characters into human nature, about how much he could fall and how unbearably hard for him to get out ... And in this incredible achievement actors, a brilliant duo Heath Ledger and Abbie Cornish. They both re-created this world (which is re-created, not created, because of this empathy to the role I do not often see on the screen), they discovered his audience in all its emptiness, darkness and fear ...

The result: an incredibly impressive acting, an incredibly real world of characters in the movie and an incredibly impressive film.

10 of 10

- When you stop - you do not want when you want to stop - you can not ...

Candy is a hearbreaking film that can be quite hard to watch because of the drug addiction and the suffering that Dan and Candy went through. It is a very powerful film from the word "go" when the film started. It was very emotional as well with a very important message. Candy is a film that does have a rather bright title but when you look into it and watch it, it is a very dark story. It is like a couple version of Trainspotting. It is a gut-wretching film with all the pain, suffering and upsets that are featured within this film. I was gripped with this film all the way through without getting bored of it. It shows the beauty of love. They do have arguments and fights quite regularly because I know they love each other.


The acting from both Abbie Cornish and the late Heath Ledger were absolutely amazing. Their top notch performances didn't earn any credit as far as awards are concerned. I could feel the love as well as the confliction between Candy and Dan. Also, because Cornish and Ledger are Australian they are awesome fits for the characters. Also, Geoffrey Rush is Australian. Abbie Cornish portrayed Candy like how Ewan McGregor portrayed Renton in Trainspotting. Cornish was really heartfelt where you could call Candy a "selfish, bitchy whore" and can feel sorry for her because they were both desperate. Because her and her boyfriend Dan are "junkies" she earns their money by sleeping "with men she hates". Her performance made the character so realistic. Heath's performance as Dam was absolutely fantastic as well. Dan is a young man who is a would-be poet who is also addicted to heroin. Heath portrayed Dan like no other actor could. This is another film that showed the talent that Heath really had. To me, both Cornish and Ledger's performance should have been worth or at least been close to an Oscar, Golden Globe or BAFTA nominations. In my book, they are both contenders. The chemistry between the two characters was so powerful it would make you feel really tight in your seat.


Neil Armfield directed this film remarkably with such force that makes it feel like the two characters were real and a new type of film had been born. If a director like Danny Boyle or Spike Jonze directed it, it might've been a lot like any of their films and how they make them. The only thing that was a bit flawed was that there were different events going on at the same time which was a bit too much. Also I didn't fully understand the ending and I think it left quite a few unanswered questions.


Overall, Candy is a disturbing, romantic and beautiful film that deserves more than one viewing from everybody. This is a very underrated Heath Ledger performance. This is a third masterpiece from him. I loved his acting once again in Candy but his acting is better in Brokeback Mountain and especially The Dark Knight. I think Candy is the first Abbie Cornish film I have seen and I am going to watch some more films from her after her really impressive performance. I will definitely watch Candy again in the future and it will be worth 1 hour 40 minutes just as it will be worth yours too.

"We had a lot going for us. We'd found the secret glue that held all things together. In a perfect place, where the noise did not intrude, our world was so very complete."

Candy is an incredibly beautiful and powerful drama that kept me engrossed and compelled within the story for the entire length of the film. Within this potent film is a life drama full of love, drugs and an inseparable bond between two people.

The reason I picked up Candy to begin with was the fact that Heath Ledger has the lead role, but as this finished I found that I had witnessed much more than the gripping performance by him; but also one of the most expressive and affecting stories that I have ever seen. Heath Ledger is Dan, a poet who is very much in love with an art student; Candy. The two of them share the same lifestyle of an addiction to heroin and a lack of money. As the story goes on, it becomes clear that the only thing that matters to them is each other, and they will go to the extremes in order to stay with each other; nothing else matters. This has been done before - perhaps many times, but never to the extent that Candy has achieved. Usually this would start off with the meeting of the two, and then show how their two lives are affected as they change their lifestyle to be with each other. But this is much different, much more interesting and intriguing. We start off with the two of them already indivisible from each other, already as passionate towards each other as they are addicted to the drug. We then travel deeper into the story and meaning of the film, the consequences of the drug and their lifestyle appear and desperation takes place, causing them to give up everything but their love for each other.
Although the whole of this film is touching and strong, there were certainly parts which were especially emotional and heartrending. The brilliant performances from the actors combined with the innovative and convincing story was arousing to an extent that I had never seen before, making the viewing mesmerizing and beautiful to watch. The directing by Neil Armfield created the atmosphere needed - both gripping and striking to watch. Something I didn't know before watching Candy, was that it is in fact based a novel - 'Candy: A Novel of Love and Addiction' by Luke Davies. And it's that compelling story that holds the whole film together, that is the basis of this film which I have loved, and now I am more than interested in reading it.

The soundtrack of Candy somehow added to the realism of the story and perfectly matched with the events at the time. This kind of thing is often overlooked with a story like this, but I certainly appreciated it. During various scenes the score made the entire film more influential and absorbing, which is exactly what was needed to make this film even better than what could have been achieved.

Heath Ledger was exceptional and Unparalleled, exceeding everything I would have expected from him. This has to be one of his best performances that I have seen, and watching this has made me admire him for his talents, as well as distressed that he had so much more to offer that we will never see. Abbie Cornish was incredible for her role as Candy, creating a character that had my sympathy as she expressed every emotion perfectly and spoke every line to a level that was incomparable. The chemistry between Ledger and Cornish was also something that can't be compared, the two of them together on screen is hard to describe - they have talent together that is very rare to see. Geoffrey Rush was a nice addition to the cast, and I felt he gave an incredible performance which was needed for his role. Overall, the acting in Candy can simply be described as brilliant and potent. A cast perfectly fitted to the characters, all giving moving performances.

In the end, Candy was a riveting and expressive film that I am very glad to have seen. Full of amazing performances and an interesting and unique story, this is a film that really should be seen by all fans of dramas and love stories. Of course, if you are a fan of Heath Ledger then this is a film that you simply can't ignore. A successful Australian drama film.

Candy is basically a love story tainted by drugs. If you want to know why you shouldn't shoot up watch this. I think it was done really well especially with the three stages, Heaven, Earth & Hell. Ledger did a great performance through out and Cornish, well I was unsure about her in the beginning but I felt she progressed as the movie did and turned out to do a good performance in the end.
Also I found myself wondering at the end why didn't this film get more publicity?