Running with Scissors

source: Running with Scissors

I know Hollywood is run by politically correct effete snobs who have no clue what the rest of us want to experience when we go to a movie, but this piece of rubbish is beyond anything I have ever seen. Don't even think of renting this unless you are into curious how bad a movie can get. It's a "film" that says nothing and is about nothing. It contributes nothing to this world or to cinema making. I would rather watch the weather channel. At least that is informative and serves some purpose. The editor should have cut 90% of this film and run to the nearest trash bin with the rest. Pure, unadulterated garbage from start to finish.

I've read all of Augusten Borrough's books, except Possible Side Effects which I have not yet completed. I've loved every single one of them. The movie however... awful. I couldn't even sit through the entire thing, I had to get up and leave. The book is better than the movie in many cases, however, this movie adaptation was pathetic. I liked the comment someone else made about how you should take the advice from the title of the movie, grab a pair of scissors and run around the theater. I was really looking forward to seeing this movie, it made my soul bleed a little. :-( Sigh.

This was the worst movie I have ever seen. There is no emotional connection to any character-no matter how pathetic they are. I saw this movie in an Oprah preview and the entire audience was silent throughout. The audience members walked out with disbelief and astonishment on their faces. The attempts at humor fall flat and are contrived. Annette Benning, who is one of my favorite actress, cannot even save this movie. If I would have paid money, I would have walked out. If this is Oscar worthy, we are in for some bad films for the remainder of the year. What was the cast thinking when they agreed to appear in this film? Run from this movie.

...but if she gets an Oscar nomination for RUNNING WITH SCISSORS I will kidnap every single voting member of the Academy and force them to actually watch the film, since there's no way they saw it. The part when her character dances in imaginary snow to "Blinded by the Light" is one of the worst moments in any film, ever. What makes this movie offensively bad is its almost arrogant insistence that it is a Meaningful Film. Alec Baldwin and Jill Clayburgh are the only ones who don't completely embarrass themselves, and they're not GOOD, but I'd almost give a nomination to Clayburgh just for not pissing me off by her mere presence at the end of the film. Ryan Murphy: the next time you make a film, make it stylistically consistent, and there's also a good thing called character development. If every character in your film is going to be an a******, at least make them HUMAN a******s, not the shrill caricatures we have here. When you reduce Brian Cox to "wacky psychiatrist OMG!!" and have him run around screaming for two hours and ten minutes, there's a problem. To say nothing of Bening, who makes her (admittedly very good) performance in American Beauty seem understated. There's no depth here at all. Bening's character remains the same completely throughout, and characters wildly fluctuate between random insanity and relative normality. Joseph Cross as Augusten Burroughs makes no impression at all. He rather fades into the background. Patrick Wilson makes a cameo, and his sideburns made more of an impression on me than anything in Cross's performance. Cross is good in his brief role in Flags of Our Fathers, so I'm sure he has potential, but this script did him no favors. It's sad that this cast resorted to this movie in an attempt at awards, because God knows most of the cast deserves something, but not for this. This movie should be locked away forever as the fourth-rate Wes Anderson ripoff it is.

to make up a movie-going audience - I'm certainly stunned by the number of positive comments this wretched film has garnered here. I can't credit it, can't help but be suspicious, for that matter, of back alley payoffs to critics who are touting Annette Bening for an Oscar; the hole in the kitchen ceiling might be more appropriately attributed to her scenery chewing. She's a wonderful actress but this is an unfortunately unbalanced performance, lacking that essential quality film actors must master of catching the cadence of the screenplay and maintaining it for the duration of the disjointed madness that is a film shoot. I don't really want to blame Miss Bening or most of the other performers (well, Gwyneth Paltrow has no excuse for her muzzy work), however, because this is a horrendous adaptation, a classic case of mistranslation (I am prepared to assume. I haven't read the book and don't think I will after this). The script launches us into the middle/muddle of unaccountable behaviour and extreme emotional angst spewing from mystifying characters who have developed relationships neither with us nor each other. It quickly becomes a grotesquely excessive tsunami-like assault that sullies characters and audience alike and left me like a survivor shaking my head at the detritus left at the end of each repetitive episode. Shock and awe would describe my reaction to frantic, bi-polar mood swings between ranting and oh-so-quiet sensitivity, the latter telegraphed by one of the most irritating, manipulative, droning soundtracks I've heard - that is, when all this isn't being set to ludicrously incongruous toons - period stuff, ya know, but chosen with an astounding disregard for the tone of the scenes. How this fine cast got mixed up in this I don't know - I can't believe they saw the screenplay before signing. They certainly apply their skills with commitment - I felt so sorry for the wonderful Jill Clayburgh saddled with a cartoon bag lady costume and wig trying vainly to wrench something of significance from sketchy and clichéd dialogue. In contrast, somehow, Alec Baldwin rises above the material to deliver a consistent, nuanced, real performance. Can somebody give this man a lead role of substance, please? And how about Rachel Evan Wood - or Joseph Fiennes? You'd think the industry could make better use of him, and without appearing as hirsute as Elliot Gould in M.A.S.H. My vote? A standup turd, all right, but no link with heaven.

I would have left the movie halfway through if I hadn't been with people who liked it. The movie is based on real incidents, but it's so over the top it didn't feel real at all. I have some psychological background, hang out with a lot of psychotherapists, and have known seriously crazy people, so it's not that I think people like this don't exist. But in the film, the only characters who seemed consistently human were Augusten's father (Alec Baldwin) and the young Augusten (Jack Kaedin). (Although Evan Rachel Wood was an intriguing diversion - very sexy with a wicked sense of fun). There were a few amusing moments, but the overall tone of the movie was grim, bizarre, and nasty. What a waste of an outstanding cast! As I watched them go through their turns, I just felt like I was watching an acting class. This was brought home during the credits, when a couple of people were shown just sitting there, not acting, not talking. Those few moments were more entertaining than the previous 2 hours.

Amusing but unsatisfying adaptation of Augusten Burrough's autobiography. Burrough's mother (played by Annette Bening) fancied herself a poet. After constant fighting with her husband (Alec Baldwin) she becomes entangled with a quack psychologist (Brian Cox), who drugs her up and convinces her to give custody of her son over to him. Augusten (Joseph Cross) lives between his mother and the psychologist, along with his quirky family (Jill Clayburgh, Gwyneth Paltrow and Evan Rachel Wood). He also becomes romantically involved with the doctor's other adopted son (Joseph Fiennes, whom I didn't recognize at all). The film has a hard time deciding whether it's a comedy or a drama. I imagine Augosten Burroughs had a hard time deciding which category his life fit into, as well, if this is how it all went down! The doctor and his family are endlessly quirky. The man graduated from Yale, but lives in a hell-hole where nothing is clean, Christmas decorations are kept up all year around, and the doctor's wife eats dog food while watching Dark Shadows. Oh, and the guy interprets his stool to tell his fortune. But then, this is supposed to have really happened, so it certainly has a tragic angle to it all. The doctor doped Burrough's mother into oblivion and stole all her money, and the child support his father sent. The movie is often very funny, especially near the beginning, before we realize the tragic aspects of it. It does also contain one of the funniest lines of the year, concerning the doctor's private room, which he refers to as his "masturbatorium", read with aplomb by Brian Cox. The movie starts falling apart when the drama and comedy don't mix. Several scenes don't work well at all, especially a completely nonsensical montage mixing three disparate events together, at least one of which doesn't fit into the movie whatsoever. The pop music score is especially amateurish, even worse than the one in The Departed. The movie is far from great, but it's worth seeing for the performances. Everyone is very good here. Wait for video, though.

This is one of, if not THE, best book-to-film adaptation I have ever seen. The screenwriters stayed very true to the story, in terms of style, humor, mood, etc. Augusten Burroughs himself said he couldn't have been more happy with the way the film turned out - though I'm always skeptical at what authors say, because they don't exactly want a poor turn out to their film. This time, though, I'm with Augusten! The amazing cast did, funnily enough, an amazing job. It's hard, sometimes, to see a film so loaded with star power because it tends to take away from the story. Not this time. Annette Benning, stunning. Joseph Cross, beautiful. Even Gwyneth Powltrow sunk into her indie role with style and poise and creepy humor. I can't say enough about this film, when it's out.. see it!

The true story of Augusten Burroughs's beginnings, sound like a demented work of fiction. That's true of most true things. Here, putting aside what's real and what may be a figment of Augusten's imagination, there is a movie. A slightly confused, a bit pretentious but unquestionably fun movie with some high caliber actors at the top of their game. Annette Bening to start with, extraordinary and without clinging to one of her delightful giggles. She is a magnificent, deplorable human spectacle. Reconizable and yet totally alien. Her character is in her way down from the word go and she (Annette or Deidre)don't shy away from the most devastating human blows. She is surrounded by a beautifully designed human zoo of extreme characters. They carry their eccentricities like badges of honor. Brian Cox, superb as the Dickensian know-it-all, his daughters , Evan Rachel Wood and the magnificent Gwynneth Paltrow who can tell you more with half a look than with two pages of exposition. Jill Claybourgh! Goodness gracious me! Where has she been? She's the throbbing heart of the matter, dog food an all. Her sanity, hidden behind a demented, neglected hairdo, is as real as Joseph Cross' Augusten Burroughs. Joseph Finnes's gorgeous nut doesn't have a great deal of sexual chemistry with his under age lover but maybe he wasn't suppose to. As if all this wasn't enough, Alec Baldwin, giving one of the best performances of his career in a character who's on the screen for only a few minutes. Woody Allen, John Irvin even Eugene Ionesco and Frank Perry are present in this engaging display of human frailty. Terrific surprise.