Better Living Through Chemistry

Director: Geoff Moore and David Posamentier
Year Released: 2014
Rating: 1.0

Whipped pharmacist Doug (Sam Rockwell) has an encounter with a bored trophy wife (Olivia Wilde) and the two commence a drug-fueled affair and come up with 'big plans' for their new life together as well as a plan to kill off her husband (Ray Liotta). Pitifully vacuous, it fails as a send-up of privileged white people with manufactured 'problems,' and the 'transformation' of Doug from schlep to 'cool dad' because of his newfound hedonism is morally suspicious, not to mention how he seems to escape from the scenario scot-free (and become, presumably, drug-free) is improbable. Wilde has an energy about her few actresses do and Rockwell is no slouch: if only the script could have been wiser.