The Adderall Diaries is possessing of a unique, challenging vision.

| Original Score: 3.0/4.0 | Sep 1, 2020

[James Franco] shines, mesmerizing us... Smoldering with a questioning intensity...[he] excels with the raw edginess.

| Nov 5, 2019

With terrific source material, The Adderall Diaries should have been a deeply moving introspective look at various views of the same memories, but, sadly, falls short.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 8, 2019

It's truly hard to tell if this is satire or in earnest.

| Original Score: C- | Dec 10, 2018

The trouble with watching someone fail to write is that we are sentenced to their procrastination through no fault of our own.

| Aug 27, 2018

Screenwriter and director Pamela Romanowsky adapts Elliott's memoir, allowing the loose strands of narrative to unravel even further, approximating the downward spiral of Elliott's blocked psyche.

| Original Score: B- | Sep 12, 2017

The frenetic tone and uneven storytelling feels more like an outline for a film than a finished product.

| Dec 27, 2016

... feels a little self-impressed and student-filmy, yet it allows its cast a few highlight reel moments.

| Original Score: 85/100 | Aug 26, 2016

Mr. Elliott's story is not helped by James Franco, who plays him with his usual smug catatonia.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Apr 21, 2016

Disjointed from the get go, The Adderall Diaries is a bizarre compost of varying truths... somehow the film just ends up with bits and pieces left lying around, tripping up the cast and the plot.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 15, 2016

A dumb adaptation of Stephen Elliott's memoir about (among other things) writer's block, a murder trial, and S&M sex. James Franco looks stupefied in the lead role, and the film's point remains murky throughout.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Apr 15, 2016

Romanowsky attempts too much, and winds up succeeding in very little.

| Original Score: 4/10 | Apr 15, 2016

"The Adderall Diaries" never commits to any of these paths in a convincing way - the true-crime saga in particular feels bizarrely tacked-on, as if Elliott was taking a break in the middle of his emotional turmoil to watch an episode of "Law & Order."

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Apr 15, 2016

There are scattered subplots that never truly come together as a cohesive whole. It's a labor of love that doesn't successfully do its source material justice.

| Apr 14, 2016

"The Adderall Diaries" is a complex, absorbing, at times profound look at how we choose to remember our past.

| Apr 14, 2016

All affect and no personality.

| Apr 14, 2016

Writer-director Pamela Romanowsky, in her first feature, captures both fireworks and tragedy in go-for-broke scenes between Franco and Harris.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 14, 2016

The Adderall Diaries is about nothing but itself. It's not fiction, it's forgery. It's not adaptation, it's erasure.

| Original Score: D | Apr 14, 2016

The Adderall Diaries comes across as an incomplete jumble of colliding plot lines.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 14, 2016

The Adderall Diaries starts as a drama about a bad case of writer's block before it morphs into an essay on the unreliable nature of memory and perception, then becomes a testimonial to the power of forgiveness -- without ever mentioning it.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 14, 2016