Running with Scissors review
Augusten Burroughs’ account of his ’70s adolescence, acclaimed on the epoch, makes an awkward mutation to celluloid. It’s quite a true-life story, as teenage protagonist (Joseph Cross) is loose by his mum (Annette Bening), whose literary ambitions are unmatched by any poetic talent, and left in the be concerned of her shrink (Brian Cox) in a tumbledown mansion where he and the doc’s long-suffering family (neurotic daughters Gwyneth Paltrow and Evan Rachel Wood, down-trodden spouse Jill Clayburgh) fend for themselves. No lack of juicy material then, but the smokescreen turns it into a mall of screechy subjective peccadilloes, with spoonful breathing wait between one quaint set-smashed similar and the next. It’s not hard to surmise writer-producer-director Murphy’s credentials in television; the for the most part thing’s played for those with short publicity spans.
What a shame because of the cast. Bening’s work as the over-medicated ‘Me Generation’ fatality is outstanding, but it’s rendered conjectural by the film’s collapse to manufacture much emotional harmony. Cox is spot-on as the brittle charlatan of a therapist, while Alec Baldwin’s contribution as Augusten’s boozy befuddled dad is focus-breaking. If even a flick picture show needed a intense understanding, this is it. All that promise, exasperatingly unfulfilled.
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Mary Allen