Take Your Pills

    Take Your Pills
    2018

    Synopsis

    In a hypercompetitive world, drugs like Adderall offer students, athletes, coders and others a way to do more -- faster and better. But at what cost?

    Your Movie Library

    Cast

    • Eben BrittonSelf - Former NFL Player (as Eben)
    • Dr. Wendy BrownSelf - Political Theorist, UC Berkeley
    • ArianaSelf - College Sophomore
    • DelaneySelf - College Junior
    • Jasper Holt-TezaSelf - College Senior (as Jasper)
    • LeighSelf - College Senior
    • Anjan ChatterjeeSelf - Chair of Neurology, University of Pennsylvania
    • Alan SchwarzSelf - Journalist, Author - ADHD Nation
    • Nicholas RasmussenSelf - Author, On Speed
    • NathanaelSelf - Software Engineer

    Recommendations

    • 75

      The Playlist

      They are tough and necessary questions that make Take Your Pills, for all its dizzying energy, a grounded and rigorous film. Though at times, it feels too squeamish to lean all the way into an idea or too hard on a particular truth, which makes it feel too deliberate and maybe not quite the earnest dissection it could be.
    • 70

      Variety

      The kinds of connections that Take Your Pills makes, between the culture of information overload and a radically tightened job market and heightened personal performance and the chemical itch that fuels this whole late-stage capitalist dynamic, may strike some as too speculative for comfort. Yet it’s precisely by making connections like these that a documentary can fire up your perceptions enough to burn through the cumulative effects of advertising.
    • 63

      Movie Nation

      It’s pretty late in the game to be getting a primer on this years-long epidemic, but the least you can say about this super-slick, ADHD friendly film is that you can’t watch it and say you don’t have an idea how it could benefit you or your kid, and just a taste of exactly why it’s a bad idea.
    • 50

      The Hollywood Reporter

      Although the prescription drug users that Klayman (Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry) profiles have some interesting things to say about how these products affect their performance and perceptions, the steady stream of talking-head experts doesn’t do much to raise the movie’s pulse.
    • 42

      IndieWire

      A reductive documentary that’s far too focused on the big picture to really unpack the human element.

    Seen by

    • Danka S. Kojić