“Why Stop Now” was an official selection at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. The movie stars several award nominees and winners and you would expect this to be a good movie, but it falls flat on so many levels. Eli (Jesse Eisenberg) is a talented piano prodigy that has had a “rough” background, but somehow managed to get an audition for a world-renowned piano conservatory. The only problem is Eli has to bring his mom, Penny (Melissa Leo), to rehab for her drug problem, but they will not take her unless she has a “dirty” urine sample. To make this happen, they mother and son duo visit Penny’s drug dealer, Sprinkles (Tracy Morgan), and chaos ensues.

I expected a lot from this movie when I saw who was starring in it, but I was thoroughly disappointed. I am still not sure how this was even chosen as an official selection because it was such a bad movie. Besides the plot being one sided and predictable, the characters were wrongfully casted. Jesse Eisenberg seems to play the same exact character in all of his roles and this movie felt like I was watching him as Mark Zuckerberg or Nick or Columbus all over again. As for Tracy Morgan, I love watching “30 Rock” and expected him to be funnier in the movie, but he played the stereotypical drug dealer and he was distastefully offensive. Lastly, Melissa Leo was the worst druggie I have ever seen in movies and came off as more irritating than anything else. Then again, if they chose to have other actors/actresses to play these roles, I doubt the movie would have been salvaged either way.

In addition, the pacing of the movie was too slow and there was not enough in the movie to keep my attention. There were a few extras, but not much, and that lowered my rating even more. Lastly, the movie was difficult to be taken seriously or for me to relate to and this made it hard for me to care what actually happened to the characters or feel any remorse for them. I do not recommend this movie in any way, unless you plan on gifting it to someone you do not like. “Why Stop Now” is a total skip and for those reasons, I am giving this movie my first “F” of 2013.