Really love this unrated movie. In a lot off ways i'm a fan off this type of movies.

I was fooled by comments here into watching this one. It is, in a sense, all flashback without an establishing context. We don't learn until the end that much of Fox's problem results from his mother's death. The other reason -- the 'divorce' -- is made much of but no context for that is established. So -- he drinks, snorts, and fails in his job as a fact-checker for a Vanity Fair type of magazine. And -- so what? The motivation seems just to be self-destruction, and that is not particularly interesting. I suppose the Robards character (like the coma baby) is a 'reflector' of the main character. But the Robards character seems actually to have had a life at some point in the distant past. What is he doing now? Is he still holding down a job? Why was Fox's character broke at some points yet affluent at others? Can anyone drink vodka all day, snort, and still function? His treatment of his brother was not only nasty, but unmotivated. What was the point of the ferret episode? The main character's equation of his friend and ex-wife at the end was incomprehensible. This is an incoherent ramble. No story. Tedious and radically un-involving.

Bright Lights, Big City is a 1988 film starring Michael J Fox as a cocaine addicted newspaper editor.The movie shows him and his friend played by Keifer Sutherland, the partying & the coke that they do together, plus some parts of the past.Apparently he does cocaine to forget about how his wife left him and how his mother died.It has been a year since this has happened.There is also some messed up part with a coma baby, which he has a dream sequence about.The acting is fairly good from Fox and Sutherland.There are some fairly powerful dramatic scenes, also one funny scene involving a ferret, also the 1980's soundtrack was fairly good as well, especially "Century's End" by Donald Fagen.But other than that, the film was fairly boring.It was realistic as a lot of business-types were doing cocaine.Movies/Video Games such as "Carlito's Way", "Grand Theft Auto Vice City" & "American Psycho" will show this.I have never read the book and only heard of the author when he was mentioned in Ellis's semi-autobiographical novel "Lunar Park".I personally thought "American Psycho"(another movie which is partly about business types in the 1980's) to be a better movie.This is a decent film, it was just sort of boring.

written by Jay McInerney, who also wrote "Gia". Kiefer Sutherland, Michael J. Fox, Jason Robards, John Houseman, Tracy Pollan and Phoebe Cates, also a small cameo with Diane Wiest as Fox's mother.There are a few insightful moments, but the 80's coke thing is getting old. This movie is preferable to shallow films like "54" and "Wonderland", however. This film has developed its players, Michael J. Fox is sympathetic as Jaime, floundering at his NY job, partying, losing his fashion model wife.Kiefer Sutherland is also appropriately narcissistic, onto the next party, next girl, next high. Fox does not want to turn out like him, and anyone who is interested in his character may want to read the book. If I recall correctly, the book is less than 200 pages.The theme is more realistic in the book; for example Jaime finds himself reading the New York Post; retracted to absurd sensationalism, the meaninglessness of current events, the random anonymity of his life.While some of the scenes now seem contrived, at least the disco scenes are kept to a minimum, and the story is an interesting character study of a young graduate floundering in NY. 8/10