Entertainment, Movies - Air Force Times

‘Running with Scissors’: Missing the point

“Running With Scissors,” the film version of Augusten Burroughs’ best-selling 2002 memoir about his allegedly whacked-out childhood, is one seriously bent flick — and not in a good way.

It has a powerhouse cast giving powerhouse performances that ultimately add up to a lot of nothing, unless you think the idea that dysfunctional families are an emotional burden is an original concept.

I haven’t read the book; maybe it all works sublimely in print. All I can tell you is that the characters in this film come off so aggressively and self-consciously quirky that it’s impossible to believe it’s all true, as Burroughs claims.

Hey, there’s a licensed shrink here who thinks he can divine the future from the shape and texture of his morning constitutionals. ’Nuff said?

The movie (written and directed by Ryan Murphy, creator of the FX Networks TV series “Nip/Tuck”) telegraphs its punches early, with Augusten (baby-faced Joseph Cross) offering the film understatement of the year: “I guess it doesn’t matter where I begin. … No one’s gonna believe me anyway.”

From there we go back to his pre-adolescent years. His flaky, bipolar, narcissistic mom Deirdre (Annette Benning) pines to make it famous as a great poet — or rather, believes she already is a great poet who simply has yet to be properly recognized.

She treats her hubby Norman (Alec Baldwin), a numb, detached alcoholic, with alternating blasts of contempt and rage because she thinks he’s responsible for her lack of creative success.

In a last-ditch attempt to repair their marriage, Deirdre drags Norman to her shrink, Dr. Finch (Brian Cox), he of the fortune-telling bowel movements. He also has a back room in his office suite to which he retreats for self-pleasure; the room sports only a couch, a small table, a lamp and photos of Indira Gandhi and Queen Elizabeth II.

All together now: Ewwwww.

When Norman objects to Finch’s assertion that the couple will need five hours of therapy daily, Deirdre leaves him — and drops Augusten in Finch’s care so she can be free to “unblock her unconscious.”

To that point, the story retains a link to reality — way out, but not completely over the edge. That link is snapped when 13-year-old Augusten moves in with the Finches for what turns into a two-year stay.

The family lives in a hot-pink Victorian mansion with a yard awash in junk, a kitchen with dirty dishes piled 3 feet high and a Christmas tree that’s been up for more than two years.

Finch’s wife, Agnes (Jill Clayburgh), is a zombie who spends her days staring at the TV in slack-jawed stupefaction while snacking on dog kibble.

Older daughter Hope (Gwyneth Paltrow) makes decisions by interpreting randomly selected words from the Bible. Younger daughter Natalie (Evan Rachel Wood) is a glammed-out vamp with an unhealthy interest in electroshock therapy.

Then there’s Finch’s “adopted son,” Neil (Joseph Fiennes) — a gay schizo with a cacophonous chorus of voices in his head who introduces Augusten to sex in an act of what is, technically, statutory rape. (It’s a measure of how loopy the rest of the film is that this realization carries virtually no impact.)

This is enough nuttiness for five movies. All the characters go around and around to no purpose, while Augusten himself fades into the wallpaper, a passive spectator to the inane three-ring circus swirling around him.

It’s quite easy to admire the performances; Bening, especially, adds new and not-unsympathetic twists to the mommy-monster film tradition and will surely get an Oscar nomination.

But the movie plays out like an ill-formed pastiche of random, wacky vignettes and becomes more monotonous even as the characters grow more annoying.

In our real lives, most of us must deal with disagreeable and borderline crazy people on a daily basis; there’s no need to pay good money to spend time with this fictional bunch of bananas.

1-1/2 stars. Rated R for sexual situations and bad language. Got a rant or rave about the movies? E-mail cvinch@atpco.com.