{"id":144,"date":"2006-11-07T09:26:48","date_gmt":"2006-11-07T14:26:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/movie\/2006\/11\/07\/running-with-scissors\/"},"modified":"2009-11-11T10:23:05","modified_gmt":"2009-11-11T15:23:05","slug":"running-with-scissors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/movie\/2006\/11\/07\/running-with-scissors\/","title":{"rendered":"~Running With Scissors"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Running<\/a><\/p>\n

JOSEPH CROSS and ANNETTE BENNING in RUNNING WITH SCISSORS<\/em><\/p>\n

Film Review
\nNovember 7, 2006 by JAN ALBERT<\/p>\n

IT’S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD:
\nRUNNING WITH SCISSORS<\/em> is a cinematic ode to childhood that falls somewhere
\nbetween I Remember Mama<\/em> and Mommie Dearest<\/em>.<\/p>\n

This is the perfect film for anyone who thinks they come from the most dysfunctional family
\nin the world. It will make you laugh a lot and realize that you don’t even come close.
\nAugusten Burroughs, whose crazy mother gave him away to her even crazier psychotherapist
\nto raise, holds that title. He survived his completely wacked out childhood to write a
\nbest selling memoir that has now been turned into a movie.<\/p>\n

RUNNING WITH SCISSORS<\/em> is a first film for director Ryan Murphy, who
\ncreated the TV series, Nip\/Tuck<\/em>, which certainly sees the blend of humor and
\npathos in the frenzied way we edit our lives and bodies and present them to the world.
\nMurphy and his set and costume designers (Richard Sherman and Lou Eyrich) have a blast
\nrecreating the 1970’s fashions, rooms and scenes that surround young Augusten. It is pure
\neye candy, beautifully rendered, from the platform shoes to the consciousness raising
\nsessions Augusten’s mother leads in their living room. Annette Benning really rises to
\nthe occasion as a woman whose delusions of grandeur are at first hysterically funny,
\nthen gradually become seriously disturbing and scary. If only the movie had followed
\nher extremely brave performance, it would have been a classic. As it is, it skims
\nthe surface for the humor in the situation.<\/p>\n

The supporting characters, brought to life by a perfect cast, all have their moments,
\nincluding Brian Cox as the quack doctor who offers to take Augusten off his mom’s hands
\n(so she can devote her complete energy to her analysis), Jill Clayburgh as his distracted
\nwife, and Evan Rachel Wood as Augusten’s closest friend, despite the fact that she tries
\nto use him as an electro-shock therapy experiment. Still, Joseph Fiennes is my personal
\nfavorite. He’s come along way from Shakespeare in Love<\/em> (in which he played
\nthe besotted bard) to play the leather-wearing, 35-year-old “adopted” son of this strange
\nfamily who steals Augusten’s virginity at the age of 14. Fiennes somehow manages to
\nmake the viewer care about this crazy cad and he delivers a poetry reading that I assure
\nyou is worth the price of admission alone.<\/p>\n

Joseph Cross portrays Augusten as a wry observer to the sideshow that
\nis his life rather than a participant, and maybe in fact that’s how he survived, by distancing
\nhimself and pretending this was all happening to a character who merely shared his name.
\nMany kids in crazy families grow up fast because they must become parent to their own
\nparents, if you know what I mean. But as a movie viewer, after giggling with disbelief
\nat the series of unbelievable disasters Augusten endures, I wanted to dig in and pull
\nwith him to escape and thrive, rather than experiencing it second hand. The film doesn’t
\nultimately provide that kind of catharsis, but there’s a happy ending and it does send
\nyou home smiling at the stangeness and resilience of human beings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JOSEPH CROSS and ANNETTE BENNING in RUNNING WITH SCISSORS Film Review November 7, 2006 by JAN ALBERT IT’S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD: RUNNING WITH SCISSORS is a cinematic ode to childhood that falls somewhere between I Remember Mama and Mommie Dearest. This is the perfect film for anyone who thinks they come from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}