'Side Effects' Serves As Thrilling Capper To Adventurous Career For Director Soderbergh

Posted: Feb. 8, 2013 | 2:12 a.m.

Possible side effects of watching "Side Effects" include increased brain activity, confusion, occasional irritability and warm, fuzzy feelings about Jude Law.

"Side Effects" is not intended for use by children or people suffering from short attention spans.

If you experience an erection lasting longer than four hours, keep it to yourself, weirdo.

Interestingly, for a movie based on the hidden dangers of pharmaceuticals, it turns out the less you know about "Side Effects" - director Steven Soderbergh's big-screen swan song - the better.

Emily Taylor (a haunted-looking Rooney Mara) had every luxury money could buy - until her husband, Martin (Channing Tatum), went to prison for insider trading and her perfect world was pulled out from under her.

After four years of hardship, his release should have put a little color in her cheeks. Instead, she slips back into the sort of overwhelming hopelessness that first accompanied his arrest.

Following a botched attempt to harm herself, Emily comes under the care of Jonathan Banks (Law), a sympathetic psychiatrist who begins treating her with antidepressants that make her nauseous and kill her sex drive.

But when a friend recommends the new drug Ablixa, which she convinces Banks to prescribe, Emily's entire life is transformed, down to her spectacularly resurgent sex drive. "Whoever makes this drug," Martin marvels after a particularly vigorous bout of bed rattling, "is going to be (expletive) rich."

Given the benefits, Emily is reluctant to stop taking Ablixa, even when she starts sleepwalking. And sleepcooking. And sleepcommitting felonies.

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'Side Effects' Serves As Thrilling Capper To Adventurous Career For Director Soderbergh