The Acid House Reviews

God moves in mysterious — some might say positively spiteful — ways in this trio of scabrous tales adapted from short stories by Trainspotting's Irvine Welsh. "The Granton Star Cause" recounts the misadventures of shiftless layabout Boab Coyle (Stephen McCole), who finds himself having one hell of a bad day. He's dropped from his soccer team, thrown out of his parents' house, ditched by his longtime girlfriend, arrested, and fired from his job. Just when he thinks things couldn't get worse, he runs into God (Maurice Roeves) lifting a pint at the local pub. God doesn't think much more of Boab than anyone else does and is in a position to express his contempt in a uniquely awful fashion. The "Soft Touch" is a poor schmuck named Johnny (Kevin McKidd), who makes his bed and has to lie in it with sluttish Catriona (Michelle Gomez), who neglects their baby and takes up with the lout upstairs (Gary McCormack) the minute Johnny's back is turned. In "The Acid House," a common-as-dirt raver named Coco (Ewan Bremner) is having the ultimate bad trip at the same moment baby Tom is being born to middle-class couple Rory and Jenny (Martin Clunes, Jemma Redgrave) in the middle of an electrical storm. Coco winds up in the hospital in a near-fetal state, and little Tom quickly discovers the joys of liquor, cursing and breast-feeding. The middle segment is a bit of a pointless drag, but "The Granton Star Cause" is bitterly funny in an O. Henry-ish sort of way; it also owes a considerable debt to, of all things, the Peter Cook/Dudley Moore vehicle BEDAZZLED. And "The Acid House" features the creepiest baby since... well, since the baby in TRAINSPOTTING; for some viewers, that alone should be reason enough to check out this defiantly grimy feature. (In Scottish dialect, with subtitles)