Side Effects is fairly intriguing for about the first half. It seems to have potential to go somewhere interesting – a film about the dangers of prescription drugs, and the big business around pushing them on patients. The dialog is not great, but it’s decent, and they did write a fair amount. Rooney Mara holds center stage well and with confidence. And the ever warm and fantastic Jude Law manages to hold the film together to a certain extent, just by being himself.

In the end, however, the film devolves into a contrived and over-complicated tale that winds up being too neat and not very believable. It takes interesting narrative possibilities and trades them in for run-of-the-mill psychosis, titillation, greed, and revenge. My wife and I walked out of the film very disappointed.

It is finally dawning on me that Steven Soderbergh is an over-rated director. As my wife pointed out after we saw Side Effects, it’s probably a good thing that he’s decided to stop making movies, as it’ll open some space for fresh new talent. Among people of a certain age and education, there is a certain social pressure that exists to see each new Steven Soderbergh film, which is strange because he’s not that good. There is no such social pressure to see a new Ang Lee film, for example. If you set aside Ocean’s Eleven, which was a can’t miss star vehicle, cast with an incredible spectrum of charismatic personalities, the rest of Soderbergh’s work strikes me as really mediocre. I remember enjoying Out of Sight at the time, but I’ve never, ever wanted to see it again. When I rewatched Erin Brockovich several years ago it struck me as extremely overrated, Traffic and Contagion were dreary and completely unremarkable, and Sex, Lies and Videotape never did anything for me. Magic Mike was a bit like Out of Sight – sort of enjoyable on one viewing, but I’ll never need to return to it.

Side Effects is getting a 3 in the Irreviews movie ratings – I sort of enjoyed it while watching it, but it definitely left a bad taste in my mouth at the end. If you share my opinion on Soderbergh, you might want to skip this one.