Film

Clean and Sober

Name: Clean and Sober
Genre: Drama
Released: 1988
Cast: Michael Keaton, Kathy Baker, Morgan Freeman, Tate Donovan, Henry Judd Baker

Social drama

Michael Keaton plays a cocaine-addicted real estate hustler who checks into rehab to dodge the law, not salvation. *Clean and Sober* is unflinching about addiction's grip and the grinding, unglamorous work of recovery. It's a character study that treats its subject with dignity rather than pity—for people ready to watch someone break down before they build back up.

TMDb rating

3.2

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you want a restrained addiction drama built on small, honest scenes, where Michael Keaton's jittery charm curdles into something quieter and more frightening than you expect.

Skip it if you need plot-driven momentum or a lighter touch, since this moves at a deliberate pace through meetings, group rooms and long silences about a subject that offers little relief.

What it asks of you: Two hours and four minutes of patience, with much of it spent watching a man lie to himself in rooms full of talk rather than action.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Requiem for a Dream2000

Darren Aronofsky's four-way descent into addiction is visually dazzling and emotionally catastrophic. It shows addiction as a kind of hell that doesn't care about your net worth or the quality of your intentions.

But It's brutal and unsparing in ways designed to wound you. Some sequences are genuinely hard to sit through, and there's no redemptive arc to soften the landing.

The Wrestler2008

Mickey Rourke gives a performance of raw authenticity as a man destroying himself for a living. Like *Clean and Sober*, it's about pride, failure, and what it costs to admit you can't do it alone.

But The wrestling is real and repetitive; watching someone hurt their body for a paycheck gets wearing. It's slow and doesn't resolve neatly.

Leaving Las Vegas1995

Nicolas Cage won an Oscar for playing a screenwriter drinking himself to death in Las Vegas. It's unflinching about addiction's logic and the people who enable it, without ever becoming preachy.

But It's relentlessly bleak and sexually explicit. There is no recovery story here, no redemption moment—just a man choosing oblivion.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Clean and Sober

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Barfly1987

Both films are set in 1980s Los Angeles and feature men grappling with addiction, but *Barfly* refuses the recovery narrative entirely—it's a love letter to the life *Clean and Sober* is trying to escape.

Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway as two chronic alcoholics sparring and flirting in a Los Angeles bar. Charles Bukowski wrote it; it treats drinking not as a disease to overcome but as a coherent way of life. It's the shadow side of *Clean and Sober*'s narrative—what happens if you choose the bottle anyway.

But It's anti-redemptive and deliberately squalid. If you're looking for hope or uplift, this film has contempt for you.

The Firm1993

Tom Cruise as a young lawyer seduced by money into a corrupt firm. It shares *Clean and Sober*'s interest in how smart people rationalize their way into moral quicksand, plus a Keaton-adjacent 90s thriller energy.

But The legal procedural stuff is convoluted. Once you clock where it's going, the plot mechanics feel contrived.

Less Than Zero1987

Andrew McCarthy returns to Los Angeles and watches his friends collapse into addiction and hustling. It captures the specific dread of 80s cocaine culture and the helplessness of watching someone you love self-destruct.

But The film version softens the novel considerably. It can feel like an afterschool special compared to Bret Easton Ellis's source material.

My Name Is Khan2010

Shah Rukh Khan plays a man with Asperger's syndrome trying to rebuild his life after tragedy. Like *Clean and Sober*, it's about shame, redemption, and the hard work of changing how people see you.

But It's a Bollywood film with musical interludes. If that genre grammar irritates you, the sincerity will feel mawkish.

Moonlight2016

Three chapters in the life of a man shaped by trauma, addiction, and survival. It's poetic and intimate, focused on who we become through pain rather than how we escape it.

But The pacing is contemplative to the point of stillness. If you need plot momentum, this will feel like watching someone else's dreams.

Crazy Heart2009

Jeff Bridges as a washed-up country musician reckoning with decades of drinking and failure. It's warm-hearted without being sentimental, focused on the messy reality of getting a second chance.

But It pivots toward sentimentality in the final act. The redemption arc is fairly traditional, which can feel thin if you've seen it before.

Trainspotting1996

Danny Boyle's kinetic, darkly funny descent into Edinburgh heroin addiction. It's visceral and unflinching about why addiction is appealing, not just devastating—which makes it more honest than most recovery narratives.

But The stylization can feel dated. Some of the Scottish dialect is tough to parse, and the film is cavalier about depicting needle use and sexual violence.

Synecdoche, New York2008

Both films feature protagonists trying to escape themselves through a constructed persona—the salesman version of Daryl, the theatre visionary version of Hoffman. Both ask whether you can ever actually become a different person.

Philip Seymour Hoffman as a theatre director constructing an increasingly baroque replica of reality inside a warehouse. It's formally ambitious and genuinely strange—a film about obsession, ego, and the ways we use work to avoid living. Not about addiction, but about the same addictive impulse: the need to control and escape simultaneously.

But Charlie Kaufman's screenwriting is baroque and sometimes self-indulgent. The film is nearly two and a half hours and gets progressively more abstract. You have to surrender to its logic or it becomes exhausting.

I Am Sam2001

Like *Clean and Sober*, it's genuinely about the grind of self-improvement and whether redemption is even possible if the world is determined not to let you change.

Sean Penn plays a man with intellectual disability fighting for custody of his daughter. It's an underrated emotional gutpuncher about rebuilding a life, managing shame and limitation, and what you're willing to do for someone else. The court battle is almost beside the point—it's about whether you can become the person someone needs.

But It's aggressively earnest and manipulative about sentiment. Penn's performance, while committed, can read as a movie star showing his range rather than disappearing into the role.