BEFORE: As I expected, I'm experiencing topical drift - this was supposed to be back-to-school week, and it's become more about self-medicating teenagers with psychiatric problems. And it looks like tonight's film fits right in with that. The obvious linking between actors would be from Robert Downey Jr. to his "Iron Man" co-star, Gwyneth Paltrow (last seen in "The Avengers").
THE PLOT: The son of an alcoholic father and an unstable mother is handed off to his mother's therapist, Dr. Finch, and spends his adolescent years as a member of Finch's bizarre extended family.
AFTER: This one puts me in a weird position - since the film is based on a memoir, an author's actual life experiences, it's not for me to say what seems far-fetched or unbelievable. I have to take the author's word that these events, or something close to them, happened. I'm only left to judge whether said events make for an entertaining film.
Sadly, I'm not so sure. The main character is a confused teen who lives with his eccentric mother, and is used to taking care of her. No, wait, that was Charlie Bartlett in last night's film. Tonight's main character is a confused teen who lives with his eccentric divorced mother for a while, and finds that she's too much to handle. And this movie is set in the 1970's, so that's a whole different decade.
Also, the main focus of "Charlie Bartlett" was the main character's attempts to fit in at school - and this character hardly ever even goes to school - at least, we never see him there. He sure doesn't seem interested in attending class, or trying to learn anything there. Stay in school, kids, or you'll end up being raised by your mom's psychiatrist in a house full of his eccentric family members and other various hangers-on.
The director of this film, Ryan Murphy, also created the shows "Nip/Tuck" and "Glee", and this film came off as sort of a weird synthesis of the two - not that I've watched either show regularly, but I've slowed down to watch the interesting or salacious parts of both. If you took the self-indulgent vain characters from "Nip/Tuck", along with some of the medical/drug topics, and mixed it with the confused but self-aware high-schoolers from "Glee", minus all the emoting and overdubbed singing, you might get something like this film.
As always, your mileage may vary, and maybe you'll see something of yourself in Augusten's experiences here - but other than absorbing my own mother's neuroses, I didn't find much here that applied to my life in the 1970's and 80's. I mean, I did split for New York when I was 17, only two years older than the main character here, but that was for college, not to become a writer. Isn't it always a copout to have a main character who becomes a writer, and vows to write a book someday about his experiences - a book that will eventually become the film we're watching right NOW? I guess maybe there could be an exception for memoirs, but screenplay-wise, it's pretty trite.
Also starring Joseph Cross (last seen in "Flags of Our Fathers"), Annette Bening (last seen in "The Kids Are All Right"), Alec Baldwin (last seen in "Mercury Rising"), Brian Cox (last seen in "For Love of the Game"), Evan Rachel Wood (last seen in "The Missing"), Jill Clayburgh (last seen in "Semi-Tough"), Joseph Fiennes (last seen in "Elizabeth"), Gabrielle Union (last seen in "Bad Boys II"), with cameos from Kristin Chenoweth (last seen in "Four Christmases"), Patrick Wilson (last seen in "The A-Team").
RATING: 4 out of 10 rejection letters
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