Very disappointed :(

Don't listen to the negative reviews

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Good very well-executed social study but what a shame the writer brings such a hopeless dark outlook to the ending. The young cast is first rate, well filmed, and well directed. The story is not original but definitely pushes the usual limits of the high school drama beyond the comfortable bounds of suburbia, all the way to Medellin, Colombia. This said, as one considers the sad realities of growing up underprivileged, do we really have to be convinced that wealthy youths do indeed live in a dream world, protected from responsibility and remorse by an immuable armor or money and privilege. Do we really have to believe that the hopeful middle-class teenagers have nothing to hope for than despair and boredom in future made of struggle and misery? I don't think so. Why waste your public's hopes and flush them down the toilets of despair? Move on from the clichés and start using your art to help shape the world rather than this sob fest over injustices and impossible futures. Where are America's balls?

The narrative follows a predictable arc without any insight that would otherwise make it worthwhile for viewers to watch this film. There was nothing provocative or contentious offered by the flat, almost cardboard like characters. It is the kind of shallow, angst filled melodrama found in movies aimed at the young adults segment except the topic of hard drug use by teenagers is anything but because the tragedy is very real.Derek Oatis is the person whom this movie was based off. He got away with 5 years probation and 5,000 hours of community service for selling hard drugs to teenage boys and girls. Mull over that for a while and then watch a documentary about what happens when young people become addicted to drugs. None of the people associated with the Derek Oatis case (including Derek Oatis himself) suffered any long-term consequences for what they did. They got expelled from school but then went on to lucrative and prestigious careers in law, finance, media and the like. Knowing this, is it really meaningful to make a film about the 'social injustices' of being a poor kid in a rich kid school?

rotten tomato is stupid. lately movies that are 0% and garbage are rated in the 80's/90's over there and winning Oscars for political correctness. i guess in this safe space day and age a good old fashioned story of how awesome the 80's was and the innocence the decade shared in relation to drugs and especially coke is lost on many. the soundtrack was amazing. only reason I'm here really...i figured someone had the track list for Pete's sake.great movie. travesty rotten gave it poor reviews. i may have bypassed it.8/10rotten tomato is stupid. lately movies that are 0% and garbage are rated in the 80's/90's over there and winning Oscars for political correctness. i guess in this safe space day and age a good old fashioned story of how awesome the 80's was and the innocence the decade shared in relation to drugs and especially coke is lost on many. the soundtrack was amazing. only reason I'm here really...i figured someone had the track list for Pete's sake.great movie. travesty rotten gave it poor reviews. i may have bypassed it.8/10

Spoiler Alert !!!Great Movie. The two lead actors, Lucy Fry and Thomas Mann are destined for greatness. The actors are perfectly cast, seeing Alex's good looks fade away like Lindsey Lohan, until she literally disappears, is almost like a bellwether of the movie's trajectory. Ellis's decline from the king of the preppy universe to a beaten down, pathetic loser, is almost Shakespearean. His pathological betrayal of all his friends, his revenge on Toby and Alexis is mirrored in his face. By the end of the movie, his handsome face has turned into a psychotic Cillian Murphy as Dr. Jonathan Crane/Scarecrow in Batman BeginsBut Alex is only a cipher, in love with no one, not Ellis, not Toby and not herself. Like the Cocaine itself, an empty vehicle that blows away like dust. The fact that Toby never sees Alex again is a metaphor for the coke itself.The most sexualized scene is when Alex is on the bus with her boyfriend touching his body but having sex with Toby as she locks her eyes on him. There is a moment she grabs Ellis as if to show Toby she is grabbing him while Ellis is hopelessly clueless about how much Alex is not in love with him.The only true love in the movie is Toby's father's love towards Toby. The lack of parental love and affection is the biggest force in the movie, which I think causes the suicide death of the girl, the underlying reason for Toby being in a world he does belong in and the source of the money that allows the rampant drug used. By not throwing in a clichéd scene of rich parents partying, the absence of the parents love is driven home by their absence in the movie.And Toby's mother, who somehow thinks she can reclaim the glory of her German family's past manipulates her son into going to this school where he knows he does not belong And she gets her way by sulking into a dark depression that only Toby can cure by capitulating to his mother's dreams. Another parent who's self obsession leads her child astray.The ending was great was the ending with the real life, model handsome Toby, as he talks about the five minutes before his bust and the five minutes after the bust, and then instead of showing redemption or reflection on his bad ways, he embraces the entirety of his descent by even saying he misses Ellis.