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By the looks of its trailer, “Thanks for Sharing” is a film as trivial-seeming as sex addiction, the key topic the earnest dramedy explores. The feature debut of director Stuart Blumberg, who’s best known for co-scripting Lisa Cholodenko’s “The Kids Are All Right,” the movie is ostensibly packed with red flags, from its apparent upper-middle-class problems (personified by co-star and everyone’s favorite rich woman to hate, Gwyneth Paltrow) to the curious casting of Philly native Alecia Moore (aka Pink), who tackles — and, frankly, nails — her first film role. But just as sex addicts are more than bored and horny narcissists, “Thanks for Sharing” is much more than its eyebrow-raising ingredients.
Admittedly, the film is a markedly overloaded affair, with a mélange of characters and subplots that can occasionally feel oppressive. On the other hand, however, Blumberg and his co-writer Matt Winston effectively use their well-populated tapestry to illustrate the countless ways addiction can affect countless types of people.
The lead trio of characters, Adam (Mark Ruffalo), Mike (Tim Robbins), and Neil (Josh Gad), are all in the same sex-addict circle, spilling their guts in meetings while aiming to keep it in their pants elsewhere. Some folks, like, Mike, his son Danny (an excellent Patrick Fugit) and outspoken hairdresser Dede (Moore), have other addictions as well, while other characters, like Phoebe (Paltrow) and Mike’s wife, Katie (Joely Richardson), represent the strange struggles of those who live with addicts, precariously, every day.
Some climaxes (no pun intended) fall flat, and the film wanes as it stumblingly reveals that it’s beholden to tying up its many plot lines, but none of that is irksome enough to kill the film’s honesty and savvy about addiction. Whatever the “drug,” those who use it have an unexplainable void to fill, and “Thanks for Sharing” understands that.
However inevitable, every emotional breakthrough hits its tear-jerking target, and missteps in characterization are made up for by the 3-D rendering of the issue at large. When you hear the many AA-spawned clichés the movie employs (“keep coming back,” etc.), remember: Those same clichés save real people’s lives.
Thanks for Sharing
R
Three reels out of four
Opens at area theaters tomorrow
Recommended Rental
Room 237
NR
Available Tuesday
In this gonzo “documentary” from boundlessly curious filmmaker Rodney Ascher, the motives, messages, and cavernous nuances of Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” are maddeningly explored, by both the filmmaker and his who’s-who of pundits, who ponder the film with varying degrees of intrigue and arguable insanity. The result is uneven, but never uninteresting, and what it ultimately proves is that there are never enough ways — or, for that matter, wrong ways — to digest a movie.
Contact the South Philly Review at editor@southphillyreview.com.
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