Side Effects
July 2006 Reviewed by: Charlotte Meyer Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

The pharmaceutical industry claims its mission is "to protect and prolong life." Side Effects is a romantic comedy that goes inside the industry to reveal the hypocrisy and greed behind that claim. "Let’s keep our fingers crossed for a really big season of respiratory infections," says a district manager to his pharmaceutical representatives. One such rep is Karly Hert (Katherine Heigl, Grey’s Anatomy) who is recruited at 22 not for her science background but for her pretty face and figure. Fresh out of college and facing those loans, she’s thrilled to have the salary and company car. She gets so good at selling drugs to doctors, she leads her district in sales. But she finds herself caught between her big earnings and her ethics. Romance enters in the person of Zack (Lucian McAfee), a down-to-earth guy who has resisted the bait that caught her. He waits while she struggles on the corporate hook.

The conflict heightens for Karly when she discovers the truth about Vivexx, a new anti-depressant her corporation is about to launch. Vivexx is going to launch Karly as well -- into management -- and earn her a bigger BMW and another Rolex as bonuses. But corporate research has found that Vivexx harms the liver and has already cost the lives of three subjects. This is data the executives prefer to dismiss. Add to Karly’s conflict Zack’s growing unease.

Katherine Heigl, with her expressive, pretty face and comedic energy, gives the film its sparkle. She’s the one big name in the cast and an executive producer. This is an independent film, shot in 16 days in Madison, Wisconsin, using mostly local talent. It is the first film of writer/director and Madison native Kathleen Slattery-Moschkau, who based the plot on her own ten years as a pharmaceutical rep. She’s on a mission. The film tells us that one top-selling drug alone earns its corporation $8 billion a year -- or $1 million an hour. Among the fact cards that appear throughout is one comparing the total budget of this film -- $190,000 -- to the annual budget of the pharmaceutical industry just for marketing -- $25 billion. That’s $4 million an hour. In the battle for the public’s attention, this film is a small David indeed against the monstrous Goliath.

It’s a brave little heartfelt independent, without the kind of polish a big budget provides. The musical score is all songs from indie bands hand-selected by the director. The audio is uneven (and the background music to the menu is maddening), light and color consistency are a problem too, and direction needs a firmer hand. The features seem to repeat or overlap: director’s commentaries primarily on the making of the film and on the pharmaceutical issues in it (Slattery-Moschkau subsequently made a documentary on those issues).

But we need more small, plucky, out-of-Hollywood films like this that will take on corporate culture, whether it’s of Hollywood itself or of an industry more committed to prolonging its profits than our lives.

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