Playing like a combination of After Hours, Office Space, Altered States, and just a touch of Donnie Darko, this movie has Justin Long in an unusually frenetic variation of his usual nebbishy character, as an amoral and mercenary low-level lawyer for a big insurance firm, who goes to the wrong party, meets the wrong guy, and gets fed a mysterious hallucinogen that abruptly unmoors him in time and space during the most important day of his adult life, sending him careening back and forth across the paths of comically disreputable characters and friends and loved ones who no longer trust him.
It could have gone so wrong, and ultimately fallen apart, relied on contrived strangeness instead of story. But, it doesn't! Even though the film eventually fails to keep from telegraphing where it's going, it manages to balance out what could have turned into self-indulgent weirdness for it's own sake, as so many films do, by keeping the loopy plot ticking along all the way through to the ending in a way that ultimately makes satisfying sense as a story.
I'm relucatant to give it an "honorable mention", because unlike a lot of my honorable mentions, I'm not sure how much rewatch value this one has once you've gotten it... imagine re-watching a Twilight Zone episode once you know what's going to happen. And there is definitely a little fridge logic here and there. It may be the least impressive movie I've ever put in that category, in a film buff sense. But once you accept the conceits, it has a good time getting where it's going, and manages to see what it sets out to do all the way through to the end, without surrendering to becoming just self-indulgent, as movies as self-consciously surreal as this one often do, and even if it's not the best story I've ever seen, ultimately the contrived weirdness does serve the story, not the other way around. That counts for a lot.
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