Do you ever wonder where the games we play as children come from? Or what they mean? When I was a child, my mother taught me a game - you maybe know it - called 'rock, paper, scissors'. Your choice is matched against the other kids and you see who wins. Rock can crush scissors, paper can wrap rock, scissors can cut paper.
Running With Scissors has lots of games. And childishly clever characters. Lots of screwed up people. Nice, wealthy, eccentric, dysfunctional, screwed up people. Go play.
Augusten Burroughs (Joseph Cross) remembers what it was like to be a kid. Adults always had the upper hand with crazy screwed up games. Like his mom, Deirdre (Annette Bening), playing at being a poet. She had bipolar delusions of grandeur or something. Dad (Alec Baldwin) plays quite well at living in the real world. Except mom's psychiatrist, the crazy Dr Finch (who maybe fancies her) says dad's a homicidal maniac so he had to go. Finch (Brian Cox) asked her about her bowel movements, found they were symbolic of her constipated life, got her to admit she has suicidal thoughts after sex with Dad, and gave her Valium. Augusten secretly imitates mom, standing in front of a microphone and thanking a large imaginary audience for coming to his poetry reading. They end up joining Finch's extended family (including happily eccentric Gwyneth Paltrow, luscious Evan Rachel Wood, and long-enduring wife Jill Clayburgh) in the doctor's chaotic, rundown mansion.
Up to this point, Running With Scissors has been reminiscent of writer-director Ryan Murphy's TV success, Nip/Tuck. The pampered characters enjoy the luxury of unbelievably weird neuroses and why not. There's always a suitable specialist to minister to the needs of the unbearably vain. Even the specialist can have bizarre idiosyncrasies if they have enough bits of paper and high fees. Finch has a 'masturbatorium' next to his office, which he is quite happy to show Deirdre and her husband - the room that is. Each time we are tempted to think it is an intellectual gross-out, we wonder if he is really using skillful psychological techniques to enable his patients to release their inner anxiety/creativity/pent-up sexuality or whatever. He can run rings around the audience as easily as his patients.
Once inside the squalor and chaos of the Finch household, any pretence to normality evaporates. Finch is 'normal' because he's in charge, respected, and a doctor after all. Most of the family talk varyingly watered-down versions of his psychobabble. Natalie (Evan Rachel Wood) flirts with Augusten using a version of doctors-and-nurses plus an antique electric-shock therapy machine. Only Augusten pretends to be his Mom and Natalie pretends to be her Doctor (mimicking the scene in another room). When disturbed, she calmly explains to Dad that Augusten has a repressed neurosis that they need to dig deeper to release - quite day-to-day stuff.
An infuriating aspect of Running With Scissors is we never quite know what genre it is or what will happen next. Almost anticipating our unease, Augusten at one point asserts, "I want rules because without them life is just a series of surprises." We treat it as mock-naïve comedy, looking for things to latch onto and finding something different, usually amusing. But after an hour or so we want something more substantial than intellectual screwball. Whether it can deliver perhaps depends on how much effort you make, and especially if you can give it your full attention after it temptingly outstays its welcome.
Was Deirdre really the headcase she seems? Consider the intelligence with which she lambasts her fellow poets, the mental acuity before the drugs set in. Is Augusten's father anything except normal? Why should Augusten turn out badly, and does he? To escape from the mystery, clues fall like scenes from a film noir. Finch's first appearance is almost in monochrome (to a Latin version of Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps). Whatever he is, he is unaffected by the colourfully disorientating shifts of mood. Later we see the same muted colours surrounding a slightly older Augusten. Deirdre aspires to be on stage in a black dress against black velvet curtains.
Much of the film recalls the oddball characters of The Royal Tenenbaums (links with Gwyneth Paltrow and Alec Baldwin may be quite intentional). The characters here are less lovable than the Tenenbaums and many in the audience will cut and run before the denouement. The trick of running with scissors is not to fall on them in the process. In his complex coming-of-age drama, Augusten does that remarkably well. Teach Your Children, as the Crosby, Stills and Nash song says. Even if you don't know how.
Running With Scissors has lots of games. And childishly clever characters. Lots of screwed up people. Nice, wealthy, eccentric, dysfunctional, screwed up people. Go play.
Augusten Burroughs (Joseph Cross) remembers what it was like to be a kid. Adults always had the upper hand with crazy screwed up games. Like his mom, Deirdre (Annette Bening), playing at being a poet. She had bipolar delusions of grandeur or something. Dad (Alec Baldwin) plays quite well at living in the real world. Except mom's psychiatrist, the crazy Dr Finch (who maybe fancies her) says dad's a homicidal maniac so he had to go. Finch (Brian Cox) asked her about her bowel movements, found they were symbolic of her constipated life, got her to admit she has suicidal thoughts after sex with Dad, and gave her Valium. Augusten secretly imitates mom, standing in front of a microphone and thanking a large imaginary audience for coming to his poetry reading. They end up joining Finch's extended family (including happily eccentric Gwyneth Paltrow, luscious Evan Rachel Wood, and long-enduring wife Jill Clayburgh) in the doctor's chaotic, rundown mansion.
Up to this point, Running With Scissors has been reminiscent of writer-director Ryan Murphy's TV success, Nip/Tuck. The pampered characters enjoy the luxury of unbelievably weird neuroses and why not. There's always a suitable specialist to minister to the needs of the unbearably vain. Even the specialist can have bizarre idiosyncrasies if they have enough bits of paper and high fees. Finch has a 'masturbatorium' next to his office, which he is quite happy to show Deirdre and her husband - the room that is. Each time we are tempted to think it is an intellectual gross-out, we wonder if he is really using skillful psychological techniques to enable his patients to release their inner anxiety/creativity/pent-up sexuality or whatever. He can run rings around the audience as easily as his patients.
Once inside the squalor and chaos of the Finch household, any pretence to normality evaporates. Finch is 'normal' because he's in charge, respected, and a doctor after all. Most of the family talk varyingly watered-down versions of his psychobabble. Natalie (Evan Rachel Wood) flirts with Augusten using a version of doctors-and-nurses plus an antique electric-shock therapy machine. Only Augusten pretends to be his Mom and Natalie pretends to be her Doctor (mimicking the scene in another room). When disturbed, she calmly explains to Dad that Augusten has a repressed neurosis that they need to dig deeper to release - quite day-to-day stuff.
An infuriating aspect of Running With Scissors is we never quite know what genre it is or what will happen next. Almost anticipating our unease, Augusten at one point asserts, "I want rules because without them life is just a series of surprises." We treat it as mock-naïve comedy, looking for things to latch onto and finding something different, usually amusing. But after an hour or so we want something more substantial than intellectual screwball. Whether it can deliver perhaps depends on how much effort you make, and especially if you can give it your full attention after it temptingly outstays its welcome.
Was Deirdre really the headcase she seems? Consider the intelligence with which she lambasts her fellow poets, the mental acuity before the drugs set in. Is Augusten's father anything except normal? Why should Augusten turn out badly, and does he? To escape from the mystery, clues fall like scenes from a film noir. Finch's first appearance is almost in monochrome (to a Latin version of Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps). Whatever he is, he is unaffected by the colourfully disorientating shifts of mood. Later we see the same muted colours surrounding a slightly older Augusten. Deirdre aspires to be on stage in a black dress against black velvet curtains.
Much of the film recalls the oddball characters of The Royal Tenenbaums (links with Gwyneth Paltrow and Alec Baldwin may be quite intentional). The characters here are less lovable than the Tenenbaums and many in the audience will cut and run before the denouement. The trick of running with scissors is not to fall on them in the process. In his complex coming-of-age drama, Augusten does that remarkably well. Teach Your Children, as the Crosby, Stills and Nash song says. Even if you don't know how.