This red-eyed life of bar-hopping and back-room sniffings is Jamie's protection from real-life tragedies - including Amanda, his fashion-model wife (Phoebe Cates beautiful functional) who deserted him for a French designer, and the death of his mother (Dianne Wiest functional) a year back. Jamie is already out of control when we meet him, thanks to a dangerous partnership with yup-rake Tad Allagash (a sardonic Kiefer Sutherland) who engages Jamie in regular treks to "the heart of the night" (where there are "dances to be danced, drugs to be hoovered and women to be Allagashed"). Nonetheless, Fox's trademark shtick of perpetual bewilderment (perfected in "Teen Wolf" and "Back to the Future") and engaging demeanor - and dire plight, in this case - gets through. It's hard to believe Fox-as-Jamie could even conceive of writing a book, let alone utter the caustic and witty narration he's credited with. Fox doesn't seem the ideal casting choice at first. And director James Bridges (a last-minute replacement for Joyce Chopra) infuses this Manhattan drug-recovery tale with an appropriate rush of humor, pounding dance-club music and breakneck momentum.Īs main-man Jamie Conway, a would-be author taking bleary-eyed, runny-nosed stock of himself, Michael J. Jay McInerney has adapted his cult novel "Bright Lights, Big City," a fictional requiem for the drug-snorter set, with coke- cutting perfection.
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