Addicted

Woodruff's direction is smooth enough on a technical level, but the film's storytelling has little dimension, even for a melodrama.

The actors are uniformly handsome and mostly serviceable, though the same can't be said about the filmmaking or the writing.

Watching "Addicted" is like eating Cheese Whiz straight from the jar. There's no nutritional value. It's kind of embarrassing. But it does satisfy a base craving for cheap, immediate sensation.

The film unfortunately depicts black female sexuality, a topic rarely portrayed onscreen, with all the depth and subtlety of a late night Cinemax offering.

"Addicted" doesn't know whether it wants to be a modern-day bodice-ripper, a morality-tinged cautionary tale or a serious snapshot of sexual compulsion. Whatever the case, it fails on all fronts.

Billed as an erotic thriller but playing more like an R-rated daytime soap, "Addicted" marks a rare but dramatically neutered opportunity to explore a black woman's sexuality onscreen.

Addicted is the kind of film for which the Alan Smithee pseudonym was invented.

Part soapy melodrama, part steamy thriller of infidelity gone sideways, this film is wholly unconvincing as a study of sexual compulsion.

While the leads are certainly attractive enough to bring the book to life, the film fails to live up to the melodrama and seductiveness that made the book popular.

Far be it from me to totally trash a seemingly-silly soap opera males might find laughable to the same extent it moves females to tears. Go figure!

If one squints hard enough, all the nudity and grinding might retain appeal, but for those who can't switch their brain off, the picture is maddeningly inconsistent and comically performed.

"Addicted" doesn't fail because it wants to provide steamy, soapy melodrama to a mainstream audience; its faults are a function of its judgment, not of its genre ... more Cinemax than cinematic.