Special

**1/2 - This wound up on my Netflix queue after having seen a preview for it before another movie that I watched a while back. When viewing the trailer, it seemed like this 2006 indie flick was going to be an irreverent comedy, possibly a hidden and undiscovered low budget gem a la “The Search for One-Eye Jimmy”. Having now seen the movie “Special”, I can certify that it is certainly not a hidden gem, and only very slightly comedic, most of the laughs coming in the first 20 minutes or so. The film stars Michael Rapaport as a loser (much like myself) who never does anything, and sits around his shitty apartment eating microwave dinners, reading comic books and watching TV. He thinks he’s depressed so he signs up for an experimental anti-depression drug trial and ends up thinking that the medication he takes gives him super powers. That description certainly leaves open the possibility for high hilarity. Unfortunately, the filmmakers decided to go in a different direction which ended up showing Rapaport get pounded to a pulp several times and show a lot of really disturbing psychotic behavior that is not played for laughs in the least for most of the last hour of the film. Things are left a little bit vague for the viewer, in that it waivers back and forth as to whether the guy is mental or is actually turning into a superhero or something, which offers a small amount of relief I suppose. I’m not saying this was a bad movie, as it was actually pretty affective, but I think it would have been a whole heck of a lot better if it had taken a more comedic bent.