Permanent Midnight Reviews

It is a rather obscure flick and I wasn't sure what to expect but since there was a decent cast, I was quite eager to check it out. First of all, Ben Stiller has built up a rather successful career as a comedian and this movie was one of his rare attempts to do something completely different. Indeed, this time, Stiller was playing a drug addict. In fact, he was actually pretty good and quite convincing and his performance was definitely the best thing about this movie. It's too bad the movie itself wasn't really great. The fact that the whole drama about a downward spiral of a junkie's life was not really original was not even the problem. To start with, the introduction was terribly clumsy. Indeed, why starting the story with Ben Stiller meeting Maria Bello? It didn't reallly make sense and the whole gimmick of telling her his tale was just really weak as well. The point is that it is actually a rich story but, with such a short running time (just above 80 mins), you wonder why they lost some much time on this relationship. Indeed, they could have developed his youth, how he got into drugs, how he managed to balance his work as TV writer and his drug habbit, there were quite a lot to explore but the whole thing didn't really deliver. To conclude, even though I think it was rather half-baked, I still think it is a decent watch and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you want to see Ben Stiller doing something completely different.