SummaryRunning With Scissors is the hilarious and poignant feature film based on the personal memoir by Augusten Burroughs. The film chronicles Augusten's survival under the most extraordinary of circumstances. (Sony)
SummaryRunning With Scissors is the hilarious and poignant feature film based on the personal memoir by Augusten Burroughs. The film chronicles Augusten's survival under the most extraordinary of circumstances. (Sony)
To me, it's truly amazing how the critics and the critical sites (like rotten tomatoes) can be so HORRIBLY WRONG about this film, and how the viewers can be RIGHT. It makes me wonder if all the national reviewers have upper middle class dysfunctional families of their own, so perhaps the truth about neglectful child rearing hurts a little too much and hits a little too close to home. Ryan Murphy is a MASTERFUL DIRECTOR and has created a MASTERPIECE, period! ALso, critics complaining that Murphy didn't follow Augusten's book are ludicrous since Augusten says point blank on the DVD that Murphy was the one he wanted to option the book to, after many years of searching for one who would honor his work. Thus, critics need to get a clue there also. Finally, all the performances here (especially by Bening, Cox, and Clayburgh) are oscar-worthy, powerhouse performances. The Bill Evans, Vince Guaraldi soundtrack is a powerhouse soundtrack and unique for a film these days, especially for ones that they bathe in Danny Elfmann instrumentations and 70's rock and I'm not knockin' that music but I'm just a-sayin'. Anyone who grew up in any dysfunctional family should watch this film, and critics need to go back to studying their navels (perhaps in their respective "****" as per Dr. Brian Cox) and eulogizing their crappy blockbuster sequels, period!
People who don't deal with mental illness or dysfunctional family members will not be able to relate to this movie. They just won't understand the emotions and thoughts a person would go through. I found the book to be far superior than the movie, but having said that it was still worth watching, I thought the actors did a great job portraying such flawed colourful characters. Also I don't see how in any way this could be classified as a comedy, this is a serious film portraying serious issues.
The movie winds up becoming "The Annette Bening Show," and she's quite good: Bening makes the most of a string of mad scenes for which any actress would kill, and the real pain she brings to the part grounds the film in something real.
While the attentive art direction of Running With Scissors pays scrupulous and imaginative attention to period detail, the film overlooks its greatest asset: Burroughs.
Ms. Bening takes her part and acts it all over the place, while Ms. Paltrow and Ms. Wood do their best theater of the absurd. It is left to Ms. Clayburgh, in a performance free of vanity and artifice, to find the movie's heart.
I'm not entirely sure, but near as I can tell, this adaptation of Augusten Burroughs' memoir of family dysfunction finally and irrevocably lost me right about where the cat ended up in the stew pot, stirred with maniacally morose glee by Paltrow.
Running With Scissors is the true story of Augusten Burroughs childhood, one that he himself admits is so far out there, that no one will believe it. He's right, the story is way out there, and it's very hard to believe that all this went on for years unnoticed. Augusten's mom is mentally ill and eventually signs his custody over to her psychologist. He and his wife live in a mess of a house, with 3 other kids, none of whom are their own, and all of whom are mentally ill. The ironic part to the whole thing is that the doctor who is supposed to help everyone seems to be more ill than anyone else. Joseph Cross is great as Augusten, and Brian Cox is hilarious as Dr. Finch. It seems as thou Cox is in everything, and he always gets those hysterical random lines. Annette Bening however steals the show. The movie was weird, the story is weird, and outside of the funny and psychotic parts, I was kind of bored. This movie wasn't great, Bening however was amazing. It's too bad this movie was so far out there and so far under the radar, because I truly believe she was Oscar worthy in this role. The story is unique, the movie isn't very good, but the acting is top notch. Running With Scissors is worth seeing if for nothing else but the outstanding performances of its cast.
When you compare the movie to the book it falls very short. If you take the movie just as a movie its slightly better but still has a ton of problems. The biggest being that it struggles to develop all its characters and it jumps around a whole bunch. The jumping around issue is mostly caused by the fact the movie is based on a book that is a series of essays that cover many years. The movie attempts to remedy this by just crunching them all together and having them occur over what seems like maybe a year probably less. The thing that makes the movie a little better is the acting. The cast takes a very bad script and makes it slightly better.