Smoking Laws   Starring: Joe Alessi, Keven Adams, Marc Raco, Fred Armstrong and Michael Ciesla Scanbox Entertainment RRP: £9.99 SCBX2064 Certificate: 15 Available 26 December 2011

There's a smoky new perimeter in the barfly subculture. Across the globe, smokers are being forced to stand outside their favourite drinking haunts and have curious conversations and confrontations that last the length of the cigarette. In the smoky haze they talk dirty secrets, dirty habits, beginnings, endings and even matters of life and death...

Smoking Laws is one of those low budget writer/director projects. These are nearly always doomed to failure as those involved are just too close to the material and therefore find it hard to see glaringly obvious faults.

For me the biggest problem was that almost every single one of the actors appeared to have had one bad acting lesson each. Okay, that's a little unfair, as some are mildly competent. However, the majority are pretty awful. A fair bit of hammy acting can be fixed in the editing room, but the editing is too loose and lingers on long shots which means the acting needs to be faultless. Then there's the fact that there isn't a single likeable character. Almost every single one of the people that hangs out at the bar is a total a*sehole. This makes it hard for you to care about them or form any connection with them.

The humour is hit and miss (mostly miss) and the script in general is fairly poor - peppered with cliched characters acting unbelievably.

The sad thing is is that I really wanted to enjoy this movie. It has potential - there are a million and one stories that could have been told here, but sadly none of them are particularly engaging or even remotely interesting.

It didn't help that we received a DVD-R copy that had the wrong aspect ration on the picture and didn't include the extras (which, if you're interested should consist of Deleted Scenes; Gag Reel; and three shorts films by the director Matthew Ehlers).

2

Darren Rea