Metascore

Mixed or average reviews - based on 32 Critics What's this?

User Score

Mixed or average reviews- based on 59 Ratings

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 11 out of 32
  2. Negative: 3 out of 32
  1. 83
    The surreality is distancing, but authentic, believable performances and a low-key affect keep Running From Scissors from turning shrill.
  2. A reasonable facsimile of a perversely funny book whose odd characters are given life by a terrific cast.
  3. Too outlandish to be fully convincing, this adaptation of the best-selling memoir sacrifices subtlety for broad laughs.
  4. Reviewed by: Glenn Kenny
    38
    For the most part, Murphy is pitching somewhere between "American Beauty" and "The Royal Tenenbaums"; indeed, the characters Bening and Gwyneth Paltrow play in Scissors are, in a sense, inversions of their roles in Beauty and Tenenbaums, respectively.

See all 32 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 14 out of 27
  2. Negative: 5 out of 27
  1. timr
    10
    A great story set to a great soundtrack.
  2. kaylap.
    8
    Its a brutally honest tale of oe boys adolecents to teenage experiences. and ab fab!!!
  3. ChadS.
    7
    There's nothing wrong with the cast of "Running with Scissors"; every character, no matter how eccentric, maudlin, or downright improbable(while not entirely believable, especially Dr. Finch) are indeed colorful and definitely not boring, two essentials for a successful comedy. Is Deidre Burroughs(Annette Bening) estranged from her son(Joseph Cross) because he lied about her being a bad mother, or that he aired their dirty laundry for all the world to see? We despise her. We mock her, too. But if Deidre was, say, Anne Waldman(you should read "Marriage: A Sentence"), would we hate her less for handing over Augusten to her shrink(Brian Cox)? Despite his bad childhood, it's sort of cruel to expose his mother as a literary lightweight; writing being such a personal and vulnerable act, akin to moving your bowels in the nude(if you're bad), and Burroughs leaves the bathroom door wide open. In spite of the author's willingness to humiliate his mom(who to be fair, was brainwashed by a quack), "Running with Scissors" is on occasion, riotously funny, and has a sneaky way of wriggling its way into your heart(thanks to Jill Clayburgh). Expand
  4. RyanF.
    4
    While the movie is quite hilarious.....as to how jacked up the characters are, I think the movie hardly follows the contents of the book as well as it should. The director should have made it more to pertaining with the Novel than his own ideas. It is a pretty big disaster for a film but.....all in all, the craziness of it just makes me laugh. Expand

See all 27 User Reviews