Running with Scissors: a Dreary, Depressing Filmgoing Experience

"Running With Scissors" is slowly opening around the country in preparation for Academy Award consideration. After sitting through this mess I suggest the only thing this film should prepare for is to be chopped up into guitar picks and sold at cost. For a major motion picture with such talent as Annette Bening, Alec Baldwin, Gwyneth Paltrow, Joseph Fiennes, Brian Cox and Jill Clayburgh involved, you would expect at least a little something special. Perhaps a scene so moving to bring one to tears or one so funny it makes you cry with laughter. How about one single involving scene with at least one interesting character? This film has none of that. This is one of the worst major fall film releases I have seen in years.

Based on the book by Augusten Burroughs, the film's young hero, this supposedly "true" story is about the lives of many miserable and dysfunctional people. There is not a single normal character in the whole movie and not a single believable moment in the whole film. Annette Bening stars as the mother of our hero, a would be writer in a bad marriage with an alcoholic (Baldwin). Bening spends her days writing poems, getting rejection letters, contemplating suicide and fighting with her husband. The couple goes to see a therapist (Brian Cox) who suggests they spend five hours a day, five days a week with him.

Understandably Baldwin objects on the grounds that he would be abandoning his job and is verbally derided by the therapist. Bening continues to see the therapist and continues to become so depressed that the therapist suggests that he adopt Bening's teenage son. Bening agrees without hesitation. Right at this point, quite early in the movie, you may already be shaking your head in disbelief. The opening scenes seem to establish that while Bening may not be the best mother in the world she loves her son so her decision to give him up just like that is ridiculous.

The boy, Augusten, reluctantly moves into the house and soon finds that his new home is far crazier then the one he came from. It appears no one has cleaned the kitchen in years and the Christmas tree remains standing two years after it was first put up. The therapist's wife (Jill Clayburgh - where has she been?) likes to eat dry dog food and chastises Augusten for not even trying it. Two daughters also reside in the house. Gwyneth Paltrow plays the older daughter in a role so shockingly thin one must assume that her role was lost in editing.

She pops up now and then to make a few oddball comments and then disappears. Her major scene involves cooking a stew in which she kiddingly (I think) says the family's dead cat is the main ingredient. The younger daughter enjoys administering electro shock therapy to anyone willing to participate. Her major scene involves her and Augusten tearing into the ceiling of the kitchen to have a higher ceiling. The incident unfolds, the therapist views the damage and proclaims his pleasure at the act, and then it is never referred to again.

Joseph Fiennes, so wonderful as Shakespeare in "Shakespeare In Love," plays another of the therapist's patients whose soul character trait is that he is gay and has an affair with Augusten. You would expect that the re-teaming of Fiennes and Paltrow from "Shakespeare In Love" might lead to some dynamic scenes between the two actors who obviously had terrific chemistry in that previous film. Forget about it. Save for the one brief scene with the cat stew the two never appear in a scene together.

Is the point of this movie to show that there are dysfunctional people in the world? Well thank you very much and may I please have my money back? At the very least the filmmakers could have added a few scenes of warmth and humor to lighten the mood. When the film ended I wanted to go home and take a shower to wash the filth off of me.

Since the film takes place mostly in the 1970's we get the usual plethora of hit songs from the day and while it is nice to hear "Year of the Cat" and "Blinded by the Light" the songs are played at such high volume that sometimes (especially in the Year of the Cat scene) it mutes the dialogue, dialogue that one would assume is important enough to hear since it was written and then filmed. Perhaps someone knew how bad it all was and deliberately increased the song volume to prevent further embarrassment.

As far as award consideration I would hope the people behind this are not holding their breath. Bening's performance is so one note you end up hating her because she never does anything but act crazy. Just because she acts crazier at times is certainly not an acting stretch. Only Jill Clayburgh as the wife of the therapist rises above the grim material and even has one of the few good scenes in the movie when she tells Augusten how things really are. For a moment there is a glimmer of hope and sanity in someone's life and then the movie is over.

The title, "Running With Scissors" is accurate though. If I can get my hands on a nice sharp pair and can get to the negative of this piece of trash I will happily spare anyone and everyone from ever having to suffer through it.