XTC – Don’t do it

A MUST SEE MOVIE for teenagers who dare to follow their dreams. A MUST SEE MOVIE for parents of teenagers who think their kids would never do drugs.

Carry Slee, the best selling author of the book, “AFBLIJVEN,” knows how to write about young people. She speaks their language.

Melissa, Jordi, Kevin, Fleur, and Debby have been best friends since childhood. Now, as each one of them sets out to conquer the challenges of high school and growing up, the dynamic between them begins to change. Jordi finds he has to work two part time jobs just to earn enough money to party and keep up with his friends on the weekends. He’s really fallen for Melissa, but she doesn’t notice. She thinks he is just the friend that’s always been around to help her out. Besides, Melissa has problems of her own.

Her parents think she’s studying ballet after school, but actually, Melissa’s been taking hip-hop dance classes and is lucky enough to be chosen to dance in a video clip with the hot new rap group, Brainpower. She starts lying to her parents and sneaking off to rehearsals to get ready for the upcoming production. She’s excited but very insecure about working with famous music stars. One of the older guys on the dance team, Jim, gives her a pill, just to calm her down and give her an energy boost to make it through the long rehearsal sessions. One pill leads to another and before long, Melissa is hooked on XTC.

Her friends notice changes in her behavior but she denies that anything is wrong. She picks fights with her friends and treats Jordi like he doesn’t exist. All that matters to her is dancing, partying with her new friends from the production and dating Jim.

One night, at an underground party, Melissa and her friends are smoking, drinking and popping pills, when suddenly they become violently ill. Someone sold them all a bad batch of XTC. The police are called in and take Melissa and several others to the hospital. One of the girls is pronounced dead at the scene. Melissa lies in a coma. Melissa’s parents rush to the hospital, totally confused about what happened to their daughter. They had no clue what was going on in her life. Jordi is the only one who’s been sticking by her, no matter what.

Jordi suspects that Jim was the pusher who sold the drugs at the party but he has no proof. Then he finds a way to uncover Jim’s stash of XTC and set him up for the police to catch him red handed.

Melissa recovers and for the first time, she realizes who her true friends are, and how much Jordi means to her. She’s made mistakes. But then, who hasn’t? As she learns, facing up to the truth gives her more power than any drug ever could.

XTC is a film that teenagers will want to see with their friends. It’s also a film that parents should see, just to remind them that they need to listen more to their kids and support them more when they set out to do things on their own.