Though it's nice to see Michael J Fox attempting something different and deeper, this film is certainly not much fun. To be sure, it's a downbeat subject - a young New Yorker drowning in drugs and depression - but it never really goes anywhere, none of its few plot lines developing into anything substantial. Dramas of character need strong writing to grip the attention, and here the script is only average: Fox's personality holds it together for a while, but none of the other younger cast members is very effective, and the girls, Phoebe Cates, Tracy Pollan (then soon to become Mrs Fox in real life) and Swoosie Kurtz, don't amount to much at all. Jason Robards is more tolerable as a boozy veteran researcher with Fox's firm, and Dianne Wiest acts her socks off as Fox's dying mother. But, in a film that doesn't affect our emotions, she's fighting a lost cause. Fox's own brightness and snappy delivery aren't really suited to his role, however much he wanted to play it; yet another crash for the clown wanting to play Hamlet.


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