BEFORE: An animated film was a nice diversion, now it's back to live-action films detailing with the mental health of teen boys. Linking from "ParaNorman", Anna Kendrick was also in "Up in the Air", with Zach Galifianakis (last seen in "Due Date"), who I think has a larger role in tonight's film than he did in that one.
THE PLOT: A clinically depressed teenager gets a new start after he checks himself into an adult psychiatric ward.
AFTER: You can see why I initially scheduled this one to follow "Running With Scissors", which was the story of a confused and depressed teen, based on the memoir of Augusten Burroughs. This one's about a stressed and depressed teen, based on a book by Ned Vizzini, who started writing for the New York Press in his teens. I remember reading some of his columns back when that paper was worth reading, before the Onion invaded New York.
In both cases we can assume the stories are at least semi-autobiographical - there's such a fine line between fiction and non-fiction these days anyway. I avoid most books that aren't about Star Wars or time travel, because I figure the better ones will get turned into movies, and then when I see those movies, I won't be complaining about how they left out the best parts of the books.
Anyway, this is a spin on your typical teen angst drama since it plays out in a NYC psychiatric hospital, after the main character checks himself in because of suicidal thoughts. The pressure to succeed in the NYC school system, heck, in any school system, is a very real thing. I'm not so far removed from the stresses of high school that I can't remember them - but then again, school work usually came easy to me, especially when it came time for those standardized tests. I just treated them all like puzzles that needed to be solved, and I love puzzles.
But even though I sympathize, there are parts of me that can't believe how good today's kids have it, with the smart phones and the 128-bit video games and the internet. Jeez, I had to ride my bike to the library if I wanted to look something up, or check out a book - but you kids just Google it on your smartphones or download the book to your Kindle. My first video-game system played 8 games, 6 of which were variants of Pong. And porn? Forget about it - we had to try and sneak a peek at a Playboy at the newstand. So what do today's kids have to be depressed about?
I'm the one who should be depressed - think about how old that last paragraph made me feel! Kid, come talk to me when you're in your 40's and you've got a mortgage and a dead-end job and your knees are starting to wear out. And you're always tired because you stay up too late watching movies about depressed teens.
There's a bit of sugar-coating here, since the movie never really gets into WHY some of the inmates are there - they just conveniently don't want to talk about it. I can see that some of those reasons, particularly dealing with abuse, might drag the film down, but without getting into the nuts and bolts of it all, it seems like there are some pretty big gaps in their stories. By ignoring some of the darker reasons some people might be in a mental ward, it almost makes it feel like a fun place to relax and get away from it all, which I'm sure it's probably not.
The ending might have been genuine, but it was also pretty hokey. "Live"? That's the message? Yeah, I was planning on doing just that. I prefer the message that was sort of suggested earlier in the movie, which is to say that life sucks sometimes, but it beats the alternative. And if you check out early, well, then you lose any chance of making it better.
Also starring Keir Gilchrist (last seen in "The Rocker"), Emma Roberts (last seen in "Nancy Drew"), Viola Davis (last seen in "Out of Sight"), Jeremy Davies (last seen in "Nell"), Lauren Graham (last heard in "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs"), Jim Gaffigan (last seen in "Away We Go"), Zoe Kravitz (last seen in "X-Men: First Class"), with cameos from Aasif Mandvi, Mary Birdsong.
RATING: 6 out of 10 flirt-punches
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