A Mil­lion Lit­tle Pieces

My kink involves butting into pri­vate con­ver­sa­tions to tell peo­ple that they’re wrong: the first Fifty Shades of Grey movie is not a vio­lent affront to good taste. It is, in fact, a sub­ver­sive screen adap­ta­tion of a piece of pulp erot­i­ca, made by a film­mak­er look­ing to land her per­son­al stamp on frankly weak mate­r­i­al with­out it look­ing too conspicuous.

Sam Tay­lor-John­son found fame as a visu­al artist, but has since shift­ed into film and TV direct­ing. She mar­ried Aaron John­son (née), the star of her direc­to­r­i­al debut Nowhere Boy, and the pair now col­lab­o­rate once more on A Mil­lion Lit­tle Pieces, a film about the phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al toil of enter­ing (and stay­ing in) rehab.

Sad­ly, that sub­ver­sive edge is not to be found in this vanil­la-flavoured adap­ta­tion of James Frey’s 2003 best­seller detail­ing the author’s long, dark jour­ney to com­bat extreme alco­hol and drug abuse that left his body on the cusp of shut­down at the ten­der age of 23. Aaron Tay­lor-John­son steps up as the fray­ing Fray, crank­ing up the tears-’n’-snot lev­els to max­i­mum mis­ery, and attempt­ing to jus­ti­fy why we should want to see this self-abus­ing dip­shit pull through to the oth­er side.

Ini­tial­ly, the film looks and feels fine. There’s a brief, pre-cred­its set up which sees our scruffy hit­ting absolute rock bot­tom after some naked slam danc­ing in a smokey doss house that ends with him swan div­ing off the porch. Next thing we know he’s been strapped into a plane seat and is wing­ing his way back to Chica­go for anoth­er attempt at reha­bil­i­ta­tion – maybe the last shot before his body put­ters out com­plete­ly. He quick­ly gels with the var­i­ous odd­balls at the facil­i­ty though finds it tough to stick to the strin­gent house rules.

And you’re watch­ing the film and you’re wait­ing. Wait­ing for the ball to drop and reveal its true motives. Some­thing to under­cut this soft edge, or these scenes of ago­nis­ing self-improve­ment that we’ve seen a mil­lion times before in a mil­lion dif­fer­ent movies. Where’s the twist, the one thing that will jus­ti­fy the film’s exis­tence and its addi­tion to an already bustling sub genre com­prised of main­ly TV movie filler. And… it nev­er arrives. It plays out this maudlin sto­ry with the straight­est bat pos­si­ble, and the sur­pris­es are dan­ger­ous­ly thin on the ground.

There are wis­dom bombs a‑plenty, most­ly from the mouth of effete south­ern gang-banger Leonard (Bil­ly Bob Thorn­ton in a safari suit) and the booze-addict­ed, clar­inet-play­ing judge with whom James shares a room. Gio­van­ni Ribisi turns up as a preda­to­ry gay hus­tler who con­stant­ly attempts to rape James in a friend­ly way.

And even though we’re sup­posed to believe that our hero’s body is at the point total shut­down (not even novo­caine for root canal surgery is per­mit­ted), Aaron Tay­lor-John­son rocks up to the set direct from Mus­cle Beach like he’s just bro­ken his bench press per­son­al best. His abs are aston­ish­ing. He lit­er­al­ly looks like he could do a triathlon right there and then. It’s a small detail, maybe, but makes it hard to wor­ry about his wellbeing.