Addicted – Film Review

By:  David L. $Money Train$ Watts

“Based on the best-selling novel by Zane, ADDICTED is a sexy and provocative thriller about desire and the dangers of indiscretion. Successful businesswoman Zoe Reynard (Sharon Leal) appears to have attained it all – the dream husband she loves (Boris Kodjoe), two wonderful children and a flourishing career. As perfect as everything appears from the outside, Zoe is still drawn to temptations she cannot escape or resist. As she pursues a secretive life, Zoe finds herself risking it all when she heads down a perilous path she may not survive. Written by Lionsgate”

ADDICTED (2014) FILM REVIEW – THE ZANE ERA IN HOLLYWOOD HAS OFFICIALLY BEGUN – 10-25-2014

Before I start my review of Addicted I have to say first off that I am a good friend of Zane. I first met the author Zane at the 2001 Acapulco Film Festival and we hit it off as friends right away. She actually gave me a copy of her best seller Addicted (1997) to read and possibly develop as a script. That did not happen or I would be getting a screenplay credit today. I liked Addicted when I first read it because it was a compelling erotic thriller where the lead female character was totally out of control with her insatiable sexual addiction until her wild and reckless behavior collapses her life into misery, pain and sorrow. The book Addicted could best described as a Black Cape Fear and was such a roller coaster of erotic emotions that you never wanted to put the book down.

WHAT I LIKE ABOUT ADDICTED:

First, I have to say that I am actually elated that Zane’s first major novel to be adapted for the silver screen is Addicted. I think Addicted clearly establishes Zane’s brand of super-charged urban erotic fiction just as surely as Tyler Perry’s Diary of a Mad Black Woman (2005) launched his $500 Million Madea franchise of films. And I do not find it ironic that as Lionsgate winds down or ends its very successful run of Tyler Perry films they would start making and distributing Zane’s films. And if Lionsgate thought Tyler Perry had a library of literary ideas and materials to develop into a films, plays and TV shows, than Zane is a supercomputer of literary wealth of novels that can be turned into films. Zane also is a savvy independent publisher herself so she has a vast stable of veteran and upcoming and talented African-American writers that she could draw from as well to turn their books into film as well. And I must also mention that Zane has already had her work turned into the small screen with Cinemax’s “Zane’s Sex Chronicles”–“The series follows heroine Patience James and her girlfriends, Eboni, Maricruz, Lyric, and Ana Marie as they take on their lives in the big city, look for love and empower themselves—both in and out of the bedroom.” “Zanes’s Sex Chronicles” ran for two seasons on Cinemax, so Zane is not a newbie to getting her erotic stories translated into real dramas. She should have had Addicted greenlit before “Zane’s Sex Chronicles”. So I am very pleased that Addicted finally got made as studio film, with an aggressive marketing plan and a great cast   of commercial actors like Sharon Leal as Zoe Reynard, Boris Kodjoe as Jason Reynard Levy as Quinton Canosa. Other standout minor characters were Tasha Smith as Dr. Marcella Spencer, Tyson Beckford as a sexy Corey and Emayatzy Corinealdi as a feisty, ambitious and loyal assistant named Brina.

And I will say Corey does nothing in Addicted except hang out at bars and clubs to be an obvious Black sex stud for Zoe. Corey has no true character development whatsoever. I am also very glad for Zane that Addicted was not   a low budget indie, with unknown actors that only made big noise at the Pan African Film Festival or the American Black Film Festival. The best thing I liked about Addicted was the fact that it got made and hopefully opens more doors for Zane in Hollywood. I greatly believe Zane can avoid Tyler Perry’s mistake and not make films only for Lionsgate and CodeBlack Entertainment.

WHAT I DID NOT LIKE ABOUT ADDICTED:

What I did not like about Addicted was the fact that it had the potential to be  a Black Fifty Shades of Grey before the much hyped Fifty Shades of Grey is released on Valentine’s Day 2015. I really thought Zane had a chance to steal the thunder of Fifty Shades by having Addicted be a cinematic sexual tour-de-force that had me on the edge of my seat in the theater holding my breath. But that was not to be because Addicted is no more sexually adventurous than Will Packer’s Obsessed (2009). Maybe I was watching—an older Sharon Leal—and this will sound super-duper sexist. But Sharon ten years ago was one of the hottest women in Hollywood period. She was smoking hot and her body was unbelievable. And I am saying all this because even a routine director back then could film Sharon eating a cup of yogurt and she could make your heart stop. So when I am dealing with an attractive woman pushing forty who is a first time sex addict or suffering from sexual addiction for the first time in her perfect marriage, then we need a well written script that clearly sets up or explains why she becomes a raving sex addict out of the freakin’ blue. We as an audience are supposed to believe that Zoe in her 20’s and 30’s never had a stray sexual craving and then suddenly we are lead to believe that she cannot stop thinking about sex until she starts cheating on her husband. And it is not really believable that Quinton would be the one who is immediately sexually

“obsessed” with a forty-plus married Zoe, has to trick Zoe to come back to his place instead of her office and then practically force himself on her to start their affair. I know all the scenes in Addicted were predictable, but I truly wish we could have gotten a decade younger Sharon Leal as Zoe because that Sharon was so sexy and beautiful that I would easily believe any man—especially a very handsome Quinton—would have done or said anything to sleep with Zoe. The film gave us nothing special about Zoe that would make Quinton hit on only her and not hundreds of other fine, well dressed and articulate Zoe looking sistas in Atlanta. And to make matters worse Quinton already has a very hot and young Black lover named Diamond who is played by “The Vampire Diaries’” very cute and sassy Kath Grahm. So at no time did I believe Quinton was so psychotic or nuts in love with Zoe that he wanted her over Diamond, who unfortunately for Kat’s career barely had any lines worth remembering. Diamond and Quinton’s sexual relationship is never explained.

For me to even enjoy Addicted I would have to firmly believe why Zoe suddenly became addicted to sex. And Zoe would then for me as the older and wiser married woman have to be the aggressor who manipulated, flirted or propositioned Quinton until he wanted her over any other women. I never bought the chemistry or attraction between Zoe and Quinton, thus everything that happened plot wise after that was contrived and corny. My other biggest disappointment was Addicted the book was nothing like Addicted the film. But I’ll let fans of Zanes’s Addicted book speak for what they thought of the film.

WHAT REAL MOVIEGOERS SAID ABOUT ADDICTED:

Boring, dry, not a thriller,

Author: belydinh from maryland
15 October 2014

I would not recommend this movie to anyone unless you are interested in adult films or Porn, The story line was predictable, cliché and BORING. The movie has no excitement, the plot was simple, and not a thriller by far, the only good thing about this movie was how “Good- looking” the actors were. Many of the sex scenes were not needed…the main character is obviously sick.. the movie magnify how the main character is struggling with her addiction.. by showing her abuse the addiction over and over and over… The plot do not move beyond the point. Its like watching an obese person suffer from over eating… we have established that point..can we move on now… but the movie continue to revolve around the obsession of the addiction… which in returns bore the viewers because they are watching the same actions happen repeatedly… over and over and over again.. its like watching a 3 minute video clip over and over and over again… The plot do not expand to any dimension.. it is as flat and dry as bread… with NO BUTTER 

Zane This is a Pain!

Author: thesavagette from United States
15 October 2014

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

I have to say that as a Zane fan, this did not live up to the hype. The people that are commenting on the actor’s looks, and not the acting should go to another site and talk about that. IMDb rates based on the quality of the movie not the looks of the actors.

When you are laughing the moment William Levi tells his sob story in the movie, you know the acting is laughable. I don’t think the people behind this film wanted to really put depth into the main character, as there wasn’t any true development. As a writer, the dialogue was so cheap and so second-rate, I would cringe and laugh in utter embarrassment. It felt like a high school play with amateur writers/actors.

David L. $Money Train$ Watts  •  FuTurXTV  •  HHBMedia.com  •  [email protected]  •  www.hhbmedia.com  •  David Velo Stewart

This movie is about someone who is addicted to sex. It tells a story about a woman who is seeking excitement in her married life so she wounds up having sex with multiple men. I can say, that when I read the book I really enjoyed it. I really wanted the movie to come in a serious angle, and really show the main character struggling to overcome her addiction. I disliked the therapy parts as well. In other words, everything needed to be changed. The actors, writers, producers – I would not like to have a movie like this up my resume.

The only thing I liked was that they put William Levi, as I have grown up seeing him in Novelas on TV, so he is trying to cross-over and that’s amazing.

Lifetime Channel could have done a better job.

Author: wr4i from Ivy, Va
20 October 2014

I went to this movie mostly because of the show times of other movies we really wanted to see that we would have had to wait several hours for. I read one of the user’s reviews and thought, “maybe not too bad” and it had the word “thriller” as in crime thriller in the IMDb heading. I thought it may be a nice twisted psycho type flick, spiced up a bit by the sexual addiction line.

“Based on the best-selling novel by Zane, ADDICTED is a sexy and provocative thriller about desire and the dangers of indiscretion.”…Lions Gate Plot summary.

It was totally off the mark. Bad acting, bad scripting, bad direction. I have seldom been mislead by user reviews (often by Critics) so I was upset. Money and time totally wasted. There were only 10 others in the theater so that should have been a warning. Hopefully, I haven’t given anything away here other than a warning…don’t go!

Alternate Title, “Regrettable”

Author: Knox D Alford III (knoxiii)
23 October 2014

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

David L. $Money Train$ Watts  •  FuTurXTV  •  HHBMedia.com  •  [email protected]  •  www.hhbmedia.com  •  David Velo Stewart

It gives me no pleasure to write this review. I grew up being taught, if you can’t say anything nice… I just feel compelled to save viewers time. If this saves money to put towards entertainment, all the better. The year is almost over and I have screened hundreds of movies. This ranks in the bottom three.

You pick the category and it epically failed. Now, I have not read the book, and it must be good to be a bestseller. The film adaptation was a botched back-alley medical procedure. The female lead’s attempt at showing the confidence & class of Kerry Washington in “Scandal” was like a remedial 2nd grader reciting Shakespeare with the passion evoked by a mandatory summer school class while all her friends got to go to Disney world for the month.

Now, if you are a lady & attracted to the leading male, you may enjoy the sex scenes since the female lead is so enamored with a famous artist, at times she admits she is addicted & thus powerless in stopping a downward spiral of cheating on her arguably perfect husband. The movie seemed anti-feminist in that she could not control her behavior & was led strictly by selfish emotion or hormones. So, while the written word of the book might be a guilty pleasure for the reader, the portrayal on screen failed in believability, passion, and living up to an infinitesimal fraction of the best selling author’s success. There were no bright spots, and it isn’t worth the time to conduct an autopsy. I’m sure there is enough blame or accountability to go around. How this made it to select theaters will need to be dissected by the irresponsible studios that produced this epic, epic, grand implosion of what should have been a highly profitable adaptation of a bestselling author’s hard work. Please save your money, your irreplaceable time and yourself. Virtually any B movie offers much more.

Knox D. Alford, III

Worse than if a monkey wrote it!

Author: Brian Perkins from NEW JERSEY
28 October 2014

This was without a doubt the worst movie I’ve ever seen. My wife and I ended up playing a game predicting all the next events, and wouldn’t you know we got them all right? Addicted is a movie that seems to have been borne out of a film school class betting on how many clichés each student could put into a movie…but one student wrote some movie-cliché-mash-up software – and this was the automaton’s entry! The acting was historically poor – we will measure all bad acting in the future to the psychologist in the film. We ended up laughing our tails off at the horribleness of it all while we finished our popcorn, then walked out. Bad bad bad. 

David L. $Money Train$ Watts  •  FuTurXTV  •  HHBMedia.com  •  [email protected]  •  www.hhbmedia.com  •  David Velo Stewart

Worst movie I have ever seen, walked out.

Author: Sandra Ballard from United States
28 October 2014

I love movies and never walk out. I walked out of this one after sitting through a painful 40 minutes or so. It is hideously awful in every way: terrible script (written by idiotic middle school kids?), god-awful, idiotic acting and directing. It was boring to boot, even though it was supposed to be about sex addiction, and it was supposed to have beautiful people in it. It wasn’t even good as porn. Actual porn is far better, even as non-porn, than this. The leading actress was not beautiful, or believable in any way. None of the actors had any credibility nor did they rescue any part of the incomprehensibly stupid script so as to make any moment seem even vaguely possible or real. Was everyone associated with this “film” a complete idiot with an IQ below 80? 

nope nope nope.

Author: freetobemeeva from United States
12 October 2014

When I first saw that there was a movie coming out, I was excited and apprehensive at the same time. I’ve come to accept “Based on the book/novel/bestseller/etc” as a disclaimer that if you have read the book you should probably expect the movie to be LOOSELY based, with kudos given to movies who stick to the book while keeping the cinematic liberties to a minimum. But boy oh boy does this adaptation go waaaaay beyond taking liberties. Except for the characters and very few key scenes, this could have been a totally unrelated movie.

Without giving away any spoilers, basically the main character is addicted to sex, so you would think that there would be a whole lot of exposition, especially with the back drop being dialogue between the main character and a therapist. But okay, let’s say you haven’t read the book, or it’s been a while since you have. There’s so much missing as to why this woman has an addiction to sex. Why does she cheat? Why should we care that she cheats? She’s painted as this spoiled and deprived woman who you don’t feel sorry for,( when, in the book, there’s actually a lot that went on in her past that affects her present.) There’s no examination of the main character and the relationships she has.

This movie was an hour and 45 minutes. I could have maybe dealt with the other stuff that wasn’t included if there was a portion devoted to her past and not the 2 and half second flashback and 1 sentence literally at the end of the movie where we’re just supposed to go, “oh, it all makes sense now”, and walk out satisfied. 

While Addicted was erotic fiction, it still kept you on the edge of your seat because you wanted to find out what happened next. I couldn’t put it down. All the movie did was show some soft core sex scenes, some violence, and then it hopped skipped and jumped to the end. If you’ve read the book, this isn’t worth your time or money. And if you haven’t, well you’ve been warned. Wait til it comes out on cable. It’s a shame too, the cast was really let down. 

*SPOILERS FROM THE BOOK* I Was A Bit Disappointed.

Author: MissLovelyMonet . from California
28 October 2014

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

I read this book years ago, and loved it for its thriller nature, especially towards the end (when you think everything is alright after her suicide attempt, but it really wasn’t). The movie really twisted some things, and I know movies will never likely be the same as the books they were created from, but still. The painters name was Quinton Matthews, and he was Black. Quinton’s FATHER left for another woman, and his MOTHER committed suicide (or so he says). The other guy’s name was Tyson (who had a crazy side chick named Dusty who revealed he’d been locked up for domestic violence once). Brina never worked for Zoe. Brina was in an abusive relationship, and was murdered by the boyfriend(Dempsey). Zoe slept with Diamond too. Jason discovered Zoe was cheating when Tyson came to his job and told him. Zoe was actually hit by a flower truck. Zoe remembered she was raped via hypnosis. Jason was the son of a prostitute and this is why he doesn’t like to “experiment” sexually (which makes total sense). The mother never stayed with the family, she re-married after Zoe’s father died, and lived in another state. After Zoe got out of the hospital, Jason got her a dog, which was killed by Quinton (he grilled the dog on THEIR grill…sick man smh). Zoe and Jason went into hiding for fear of their lives, and Quinton followed them and almost kills them both, saying the cliché “if I can’t have you, no one else can”. It turned out Quinton also killed his parents, Diamond, Tyson, the cops guarding Zoe and Jason in hiding, Brina’s boyfriend, AND every other woman he’d ever been with and buried them all under the family mural he showed Zoe. I just wished all of this was in the movie too. 

David L. $Money Train$ Watts  •  FuTurXTV  •  HHBMedia.com  •  [email protected]  •  www.hhbmedia.com  •  David Velo Stewart

It’s Much Different than I Expected.

Author: Melody Newman from A Little Town in Maryland
21 October 2014

For anyone who has actually read the book, you may find that the movie is much different. In other adaptations of books we find that directors like to alter the story-lines and keep certain elements, much like this film directed by Billie Woodruff. The movie contained the major elements from the book. I.E a great home, great career, and great family, yet the main character yearned for something more. But, after waiting years for Addicted to be adapted into a movie, I was highly disappointed to see the major changes made to the character Quinton Canosa, who was supposed to be a strong black artist,but played by William Levy. Please do not get me wrong, he changed my view of the character. However. I yearned to see a Blair Underwood, Morris Chestnut, or Idris Elba, play the part.

Beyond that, Billie Woodruff did a good job. I worried that in hopes to draw in a broader audience, he tried not to steer too close to a complete African American film, like any of the Tyler Perry films. However, I feel as though the movie would’ve helped the audience connect better, if it had just been portrayed more like the book. “Addicted” reminded me a lot of Obsessed (2009) with Beyonce and Idris Alba, despite the obvious differences. My point being we yearned to see more, to feel more what the characters felt, and just couldn’t get all the way there.

I do hope that someone will remake Addicted, and follow the books structure next time. It was truly was a beautiful story, a tale of a women who has everything she could ask for, but not what she thinks she needs. A story of finding what you think you need and realizing what you have. A true case of the movie never captures the true essence of the book. Say what you will but I think they could’ve done much better.

WOULD I PAY TO WATCH ADDICTED AGAIN?:

The bottom line is that I would not pay to see again or recommend anyone to pay to see Addicted. The main reason being that Addicted after its short run soon on Redbox and premium cable will be playing 24/7 on BET a year after its release. I love Zane dearly as a friend and think she has a bright future adapting her vast stable of best-selling erotic dramas into films. But now I sadly have to give Addicted $$ because Lionsgate, producer Paul Hall and CodeBlack failed at making a multiracial Cape Fear meets Fatal Attraction.