The Acid house (D)

Three stories from Irvine Welsh’s first collection have been adapted in this tongue-in-cheek response to “Trainspotting” and the emergence of The Chemical Generation, a movement Welsh helped to spawn. “The Granton Star Cause”, “A Soft Touch” and “The Acid House” are lethal Scottish fables of drugs, booze and all that which is valued above humanity in the depths of post-Thatcher Britain. But they are also comedies, loud with pitch-black laughter that echoes across a bleak urban landscape where God spends his days in the pub and even the most successful search for identity only leads to hooliganism and excrement. Featuring an unusually intelligent pop-soundtrack, “The Acid House” is not a life-affirming comedy, but it is social commentary at its most painfully entertaining.