Side Effects

The recent scandals concerning Vioxx and other bestselling drugs make Kathleen Slattery-Moschkau's fictional exposJ (based on her own experiences as a sales rep) of the marketing tactics of big pharmaceutical companies particularly timely. Unfortunately, Side Effects, which was made on a shoestring budget, is a shrill, obvious piece about a woman whose success in pushing product takes her to the inner circles of corporate management at a leading firm, where she faces a crisis of conscience after learning about an upper-echelon decision to bury a report on the dangerous effects of a drug about to hit the market. Burdened with amateurish performances, lax direction, and threadbare production values, there would be little reason to consider this for purchase, except that the DVD release also features an accompanying hour-long documentary titled Money Talks: Profits Before Patient Safety, which features physicians, journalists, and former pharmaceutical sales representatives discussing the techniques employed by firms to promote their products, influence research, undercut government oversight, and withhold important data from both the public and the medical community. For the doc alone, this is a strong optional purchase for those who don't already own similar fare such as Selling Sickness (VL-9/05). (F. Swietek)