IRVINE WELSH IN THE HOUSE: PAUL McGUIGAN'S "THE ACID HOUSE"

INTRODUCTION: A belated follow up of sorts to "Trainspotting" reunites writer Welsh with stars Bremner and McKidd for this portmanteau of three segments drawn from Welsh's best selling collection of short stories "The Acid House".

SYNOPSIS: A trilogy of stories set in Glasgow's dark underbelly of lumpenproleteriat loosely linked by the constant unnerving presence of the mysterious Ro‰ves.

"The Granton Star Cause" sees twenty-something Boab (McCole) thrown off of his Sunday league football team Granton Star by his best friends Kev (Sweeney) and Tambo (Simon Weir). Returning home he is asked to move out by his sex-crazed parents Boab snr. (Alex Howden) and Doreen (Ann Louise Ross). A phone call to his girlfriend Evelyn (McCrindle) does little to alleviate his problems when she reveals she's leaving him for another man. Taking out his frustration on the phone box he is arrested and done over by a share-holding police sergeant (John Gardner). Turning up for work the following day he finds himself redundant. Just as things can't seem to get any worse he has a drunken encounter with a particularly vengeful God (Ro‰ves).

"A Soft Touch" sees kind-hearted Johnny (McKidd) being chatted up in a bar by the heavily pregnant Catriona (Gomez). Johnny marries Catriona and they move into a flat together where Johnny brings up the baby Shantel (Marnie Kidd & Morgeu Simpson) as his own. Increasingly dissatisfied by her new staid lifestyle Catriona takes up with their violent neighbour Larry (McCorack) who mercilessly bullies Johnny. When Catriona and Larry threaten to take away Shantel, Johnny is forced into action.

In "The Acid House" middle class couple Rory (Clunes) and Jenny (Redgrave) are in the process of giving birth when an unfortunate twist of fate causes baby Tom's mind to be switched with that of spaced out acid freak Coco (Bremner). As a result Coco is deemed mentally disabled while the foul mouthed baby Tom is viewed as some sort of child prodigy. As Jenny tries to cope with her child's increasingly erratic behaviour, Coco's girlfriend Kirsty (Cockburn) sees the chance to start over with Coco and steer him away from such bad influences as his best mate Skanko (Cas Harkins).

REVIEW: The films lineage is never more obvious than in the incredibly familiar first scene in which a Sunday league football match is repeatedly frozen to display a characters name by way of introduction, a trick that appears again in the second segment before being used to imaginative effect in the third. Beyond this however Welsh, who makes a brief appearance in the first segment as Parkie, has made a conscious effort to distance himself from "the students that watched Trainspotting".

The inclusion "Trainspotting" stars Bremner (Spud) and McKidd (Tommy) seems to belay this attempt but the reason for their inclusion soon becomes obvious they prove to be two of the best actors in the entire production. McCole is blandly unappealing in his segment, compared to McKidd's impressive performance in a similar looser role and Bremner tour-de-force in his twin roles. All things considered Boab's change of form probably works to McCole's advantage as his performance is vastly improved by it. Of the supporting cast McCrindle, Gomez and Cockburn are all wasted in offensively misogynistic roles, while Redgrave and Ross fair little better in her own stereotypical nightmare mother roles. From McCorack's hard man to Clunes' new man the males are given more to work with but it is the constantly unnerving presence of Ro‰ves in the first segment as God and in minor walk-on roles in the following two that may or may not still be God that props up the trilogy.

As with any anthology the stories are a mixed bag "The Granton Star Cause" is a somewhat disappointing modern retelling of Kafka's "Metamorphosis" but with the protagonist using his newly acquired form to reek his revenge on all of those that wronged him. The theme of a nice guy taking revenge on those that have used and abused him is carried over into the second segment "A Soft Touch" but to lesser effect as the tale is overwhelmed by the strong undercurrent of misogyny inherent in the story. In "The Acid House" the women are once again stereotyped as either manipulative whores or gullible mothers, but at least this story shows some element of originality, with a wonderfully amusing animatronic baby and strong Freudian subtext.

Alasdair Walker's cinematography powerfully conveys the seedier side of Glasgow and Andrew Hulme's editing keeps the film moving along at a fair pace but McGuigan's production is not the victory of style over content it tries to be. By cutting himself of from the cult student following Welsh seems to have left little audience for this unpleasant but occasionally amusing collection, indeed it is hard to know who to recommend it to.

MUTT'S RATING: The Acid House: **

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