One has to balance the several fine performances with the most depressing screenplay of the year if one is to gain any kind of satisfaction from "Running With Scissors," the debut directorial effort from Ryan Murphy (TV series "Nip & Tuck") about a dysfunctional (with a capital "D") family.
In fact, it's like "American Beauty" without the laughs; "Ordinary People" without the good-hearted highjinks; "Taxi Driver" without the singing and dancing. If one's deepest, darkest, most foreboding psychosis had cinematography, this movie would be it.
This autobiographical tale of Augusten Burroughs (20-year-old Joseph Cross, "Flags of Our Fathers," playing a 15-year-old and not very convincingly), the son of a violent alcoholic, Norman (Alec Baldwin) and a delusional, psychotic mother, Deirdre (Annette Bening) growing up in the 1970s, tries to walk a black comedy line - but cannot straddle it very well - often relying on just plain unabashed weirdness.
Convinced by her equally loony psychiatrist, Dr. Finch (Brian Cox, "Red Eye," Emmy winner for "Nuremberg") to turn Augusten over to his custody; the young man meets the doctor's ridiculous family; haggard, brow-beaten wife Agnes (Jill Clayburgh, "An Unmarried Woman") and his two daughters, prudish ice queen, Hope (Gwyneth Paltrow, "Proof") and teenage slut, Natalie (Rachel Evan Ward, "The Missing," "Upside Of Anger"), who all live in a pink house Herman Munster would have condemned.
He's also successfully propositioned by 35-year-old psycho (okay, EVERYONE is a psycho in this film, let's just establish that right now) named Bookman (Joseph Fiennes, "Shakespeare In Love," "The Great Raid," looking like Ben Stiller in "Dodgeball").
It's an unrelenting, suffocating kind of depression that never lets up, even for small moments of extremely dark comedy (Hope starves a cat too death, Finch is enamored with feces, Bookman's screeching anti-nun poetry and Deirdre's often hilarious slippage into insanity).
It has a great soundtrack, however, of 1970s hit, including "Benny and the Jets," "Blinded By the Light" and "Year of the Cat." And, as the wackiest of all wacky mothers, Bening is sure to garner an Oscar nomination, and her (way over-the-top) performance may actually even earn her first award.
Her work is probably the only reason to see this. You won't smile while watching it, though, you'll just walk away thinking (no matter what condition you're in) what a great life YOU have.
In fact, it's like "American Beauty" without the laughs; "Ordinary People" without the good-hearted highjinks; "Taxi Driver" without the singing and dancing. If one's deepest, darkest, most foreboding psychosis had cinematography, this movie would be it.
This autobiographical tale of Augusten Burroughs (20-year-old Joseph Cross, "Flags of Our Fathers," playing a 15-year-old and not very convincingly), the son of a violent alcoholic, Norman (Alec Baldwin) and a delusional, psychotic mother, Deirdre (Annette Bening) growing up in the 1970s, tries to walk a black comedy line - but cannot straddle it very well - often relying on just plain unabashed weirdness.
Convinced by her equally loony psychiatrist, Dr. Finch (Brian Cox, "Red Eye," Emmy winner for "Nuremberg") to turn Augusten over to his custody; the young man meets the doctor's ridiculous family; haggard, brow-beaten wife Agnes (Jill Clayburgh, "An Unmarried Woman") and his two daughters, prudish ice queen, Hope (Gwyneth Paltrow, "Proof") and teenage slut, Natalie (Rachel Evan Ward, "The Missing," "Upside Of Anger"), who all live in a pink house Herman Munster would have condemned.
He's also successfully propositioned by 35-year-old psycho (okay, EVERYONE is a psycho in this film, let's just establish that right now) named Bookman (Joseph Fiennes, "Shakespeare In Love," "The Great Raid," looking like Ben Stiller in "Dodgeball").
It's an unrelenting, suffocating kind of depression that never lets up, even for small moments of extremely dark comedy (Hope starves a cat too death, Finch is enamored with feces, Bookman's screeching anti-nun poetry and Deirdre's often hilarious slippage into insanity).
It has a great soundtrack, however, of 1970s hit, including "Benny and the Jets," "Blinded By the Light" and "Year of the Cat." And, as the wackiest of all wacky mothers, Bening is sure to garner an Oscar nomination, and her (way over-the-top) performance may actually even earn her first award.
Her work is probably the only reason to see this. You won't smile while watching it, though, you'll just walk away thinking (no matter what condition you're in) what a great life YOU have.