Just as Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights painted a picture of the heyday of the porn era that was equal parts romantic, nostalgic and cautionary, so Ted Demme's Blow attempts to do for the cocaine years. Based on a true story that chronicles the exploits of one George Jung (Johnny Depp) who goes from naïve young pot smoker in sixties California to major league drug dealer, Blow has all the elements needed for an ambitious, wide-in-scope and rousing trip into the drug underworld. So why does it seem so flat? Perhaps because we've seen it all before.

As the opening credits roll and the Rolling Stones' "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" blasts from the speakers over footage demonstrating how cocaine is manufactured, Blow gets off to a great start and then never lives up to its initial promise. Young George and his pal, like so many others at the time, head to California in 1968, determined to live a life of surf, sand and swingin' babes. In short order, George is hooked up with an airline attendant (Run Lola Run's Franka Potente) and a small-time, pot-dealing hairdresser (Pee-wee Herman himself, Paul Reubens). Together, they concoct a plan to sell fine California weed to desperate students back east. Demand increases and, being the good entrepreneurs that they are, they begin to expand. It's all going swimmingly until George is arrested with 660 pounds of marijuana on him.

In jail-by this point it is 1972-he meets Diego (Spanish star Jordi Molla), an ambitious, well-connected Colombian who, upon his release, hooks George up with cocaine kingpin-to-be Pablo Escobar and facilitates George's meeting the lovely Mirtha (Penelope Cruz). Soon, George is the biggest cocaine dealer in America as well as a husband and father. As the money flows like water and the increasingly erratic Mirtha, a coke addict, makes things tough at home, the FBI begins to close in on poor George.

And I say "poor George" for a reason. The film tries desperately hard to make George a likeable guy, chiefly through emphasizing how caring a father he supposedly is. By the last half-hour, when George's coke empire begins to crumble, the writing becomes positively mawkish on the father-daughter front. However, no amount of family-sanctity rhetoric can obscure the fact that George really is not much more than a selfish, greedy drug-dealer willing to sacrifice everything in order to make that one last score.

There is still a fair bit of fun to be had in Blow, primarily the anticipation of what Johnny Depp's George will be wearing and what hairstyle he'll be sporting in the next scene. My personal favourite? The white leisure suit, white ribbed turtleneck sweater, long hair and big gold-rimmed shades he wears when meeting Escobar for the first time. Still, although the kitsch factor does make for some entertaining moments, good costume design does not a movie make. If you want a dose of cocaine and 70s nostalgia, you would be better off putting together your own double bill at the video store, featuring Brian DePalma's Scarface and P.T. Anderson's aforementioned Boogie Nights.