THURSDAY REVIEW OF AMERICAN ULTRA

2015 rating: *

Combine marijuana with a reluctant action hero who has a super cool, understanding girlfriend and you get one very realistic scene where Jesse Eisenberg's small town convenience store clerk Mike Howell actually sounds like someone under the influence i.e. stoned silly. No he's not eating or drunkenly laughing like most pot-driven vehicles. But as he contemplates the meaning of a tree and a car in a pretentiously deep fashion, it's right on the mark...

Alas, nothing else works in AMERICAN ULTRA, a motion picture with a budget resembling a straight-to-video flick striving for greatness... And with such a plot-shifting twist (on top of a twist that's already established), it might be difficult to explain what does and doesn't work herein. Other than our two young leads, also including Kristen Stewart, having zero chemistry with each other, the CIA adults are so cliche and uninteresting, nothing matters when both worlds connect and collide and thus, the potential buzz is killed altogether... and then some.