Running with Scissors

First time feature director Ryan Murphy brings a prickly wit to the already dry humor of Augusten Burroughs’ memoir 'Running with Scissors.' The film takes a bleakly comical look at the misadventures of Burroughs’ childhood when his unstable mother left him in the care of her eccentric psychiatrist, Dr. Finch. Relative unknown Joseph Cross holds his own as Burroughs against an ensemble of talented actors including Annette Bening in a brilliant performance as Burroughs’ mother, Brian Cox and Jill Clayburgh as Augusten’s odd surrogate parents, and Evan Rachel Wood as the rebellious daughter of the family with whom Augusten most identifies.

It’s a story that takes quit a trip in terms of tone and style and the movie doesn’t always make the considerable leap gracefully. There’s a distancing sense of irreverence layered over even the most dramatically disturbing events of the film. It tends to withhold earnestness and offers up a safer, humor coated tragedy instead. Despite that, the humor hits the right marks in most places and the cast carries even the most detached material further than could ever be expected. Bening brings a tender sense of neurosis to her character even when her nervous breakdown becomes a comic spectacle. It’s a hard feeling to get used to, but eventually the film resolves its contradicting moods and creates a warmly bitter and humorously cynical look at what could truly have turned into melodrama in the wrong hands. There’s a simplicity in the more emotional scenes that works extremely well here. Scene stealers Wood and Clayburgh get to express their characters’ deepest fears and wishes with just a few words and maybe a good scream or two. The film’s best footage comes from the wordless montage shots of Cross and Woods in pure frenzy as they tear apart the very house that confines them to the ache of Al Stewart’s “Year of the Cat.”

This is a solid dramedy laced with black humor and centered around a surprisingly tender heart. There’s not a lot that really distinguishes it from the post-Royal Tenenbaums slew of films about eccentric families, but this is certainly a well done entry into the not yet dead genre. Most importantly, it brings a sense of personal perspective that keeps genre contrivance at bay and reality at the forefront.

Grade: B+