RUN AWAY!

Ryan Murphy made a name for himself creating the hit FX show, NIP/TUCK. Now he has decided to make his feature directorial debut adapting Augusten Burroughs best selling book, RUNNING WITH SCISSORS.
RUNNING WITH SCISSORS begins with the narration from Augusten telling us that this is his story and that no one would ever believe him. The story could be compared to stories by J.D. Salinger and David Sedaris and films like THE ROYAL TENNENBAUMS in the way that it is a portrait of a bizarre family that is filled with quirks and idiosyncrasies. The difference with this story is that the quirks are all that this story has to offer. There are no real characters or anyone that you can identify with or even feel anything for while watching the film.
The mother is certifiably insane and emotionally abusive to her son. The father is an alcoholic and abandons his family. Augusten has had such a staggeringly traumatizing childhood that at age 15, he is already messed up beyond belief. This is the time when his mother decides to send him to the house of her shrink (a whack job all unto himself). He is delusional, eccentric, and extorts money from people to keep his house. The house that he lives in with his crazy family is so bizarre that it steps well over the border of cliché. His family is just as troubled as him. I won’t get into all of their issues, because it is just silly and ridiculous.
I like interesting stories about interesting people. I love quirky little movies. This is neither. This is a movie that tries so hard to be quirky just for the sake of being different, it loses everything that makes it identifiable. All that is left is a cast of characters that you care nothing about and a story that is just sad. Not sad in a dramatic way, but sad in an unbelievable and why am I even spending two hours of my life watching it kind of way. There is nothing to this movie at all.
The cast is filled with great talent (Annette Benning, Brian Cox, Joseph Fiennes, Evan Rachel Wood, Alec Baldwin and Gwyneth Paltrow) and it makes you wonder why. All of their talents were completely wasted. Murphy does nothing here but act like what he really wants is to be like Wes Anderson. The story telling is sloppy and the narrative is just bad. There is no story here, just a sad portrait of really uninteresting people who are all so “quirky” it is supposed to be amusing. The movie tries to pull on the heartstrings at the end, but those string were cut early on in the film.
I know that this is the first review that I have written in quite some time and I wish it were for something that I liked much more than this, but the timing was not there. There are many movies that are out there that are well worth seeing. BABEL, LITTLE CHILDREN, BORAT, and THE QUEEN are the ones that pop into my mind, but please stay away from RUNNING WITH SCISSORS. You will thank me.