Running With Scissors

(2006)




Alexis says:

3.5 STARS

This film is based on the personal memoirs of Augusten Burroughs by the same title. It is a well casted, well told, strange but sad, slightly funny film. Joseph Cross was near perfect as Burroughs, the fifteen year old son of an alcoholic father and possibly bipolar mother. The film follows Burroughs through the divorce of his parents and a not quite specified length of residency with his mother's shrink and his family.

Annette Benning plays Burrough's mother, a struggling poet with a flair for the dramatic and a predisposition for dependency on prescription drugs. I don't think I have ever seen Benning any better and she is part of what makes this film in my opinion. In the simplist words, she could have been my mother.

Aside from Benning's portrayal of Burrough's mother my favorite thing about this film had to be the relationship between the doctors wife, Agnes (Jill Clayburgh) and Augusten. Agnes, who appears to be a little mentally off at the start of the film unravels to be the bravest, sanest thing about the Finch family and her attachment to Augusten is endearing and at times overtakes everything else going on in the film. To me their connection is a powerful theme reverberating throughout the film and this is where it gets the slightly higher rating.

If memoirs with a helping of bizarre, a side of humor and a splash of drama are your thing, then you will definitely want to watch this one.

Todd Says:

4 STARS

This is an odd but hilarious look at adolescence through some of the most bizarre situations imaginable. And supposedly it's all true. It's hard to imagine some of the things that Augusten Burroughs is forced to endure, but having at one time or another all been teenagers it's easy enough to identify with the major themes.

At times this movie is laugh-out-loud funny, but most of the time the humor is subtle and delivered very slyly in the guise of mishandled tragedy. It's a hopeful movie about some quite awkward experiences, but quite enjoyable non-the-less.

Unless you are easily made uncomfortable then you should find this movie quite humorous and thoroughly enjoyable.