Just because Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting was transformed into one of the best British movies ever, it doesn't follow that grafting bits of the author's other work on to film will have the same effect. The Acid House is a case in point. Diced into three, self-contained shorts, McGuigan's daunting task was to recreate the gritty, raw-edged urbanity of Welsh's writing on the big screen.
The first tale, The Granton Star Cause, works well, telling the story of Scottish freakout Bob who loses his job, his girlfriend and gets kicked out of his house by his sex-mad parents. He meets God in a bar and is turned into a bluebottle, which allows the vengeful loser to torment those who've hurt him as only a disease-carrying shit-gobbler can.
If the other two segments had maintained the first's imagination and offbeat glee, then the whole thing would have been far more successful. But it quickly hurtles from good to bad with the dire second tale Soft Touch, and finale The Acid House, a warped tale of a Scottish junkie who takes too much LSD, is struck by lightning, and magically swaps personalities with the newborn baby of a middle-class couple. It's a clever idea, poorly, rudely and tediously realised.
With no real time to flesh out the characters, The Acid House trilogy gets high in the opening third and spends the last two mumbling incoherently. If you have to see it, walk out after the first narrative chunk.
