Running with Scissors (2006)

Admirable film.

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

It is possible that I lack the intellectual understanding to appreciate this movie, but really it would be more entertaining to watch a 2 hour maintenance video of ant-farms than watching this one. Every one is gay or masturbates with pride all over their children. This movie embarrasses the field of psychology and turns the idea of poetry and artistry into angry craziness with no regard for others. Watching this you will feel all psychologists are pedophiles and all women artists are Lesbians who have gay sons, who love to destroy marriages and make drama when they don't get the attention they want. If you are considering watching this because you have nothing else better in your life, I suggest you hold off and just consider suicide, because if your not there already, this movie will get you to it.

Running With Scissors, though I highly doubt some of it actually ever happened in reality, is a novel I've loved for a long time; very rarely is there a book that doesn't sugarcoat life, that can point out everything wrong and still make you laugh. Augusten Burroughs is a truly gifted writer with some experiences no teenager should ever go through, and this movie is nearly as effective.Many people complained that it wasn't exactly like the book, that it didn't focus enough on Augusten and Natalie's experiences together, etc. Well, I personally thought that for a movie adaptation it was amazing, and it was nostalgic, every detail of the 1970's (which were crazy and surprising times whether you lived in a dysfunctional family or not) was incorporated into this movie. I usually think crude humor is disgusting, nasty and low, but the way the doctor in this movie acts about it is just so bizarre that you can't help but burst out laughing. The soundtrack was excellent, it fit perfectly with the movie, and the actors looked exactly as I pictured the characters when I read the novel (often something that doesn't happen much). A few events are left out (the book was WAY too graphic to be completely adapted into a movie), but what's so powerful about this movie is this: when you watch it in the beginning, the events just seem so crazy, surreal and fictional that you just laugh... as the movie goes on, anything normal begins to seem crazy and it's one surprise after the other.I never thought a scene with a teenage boy chasing after a bus while his adult schizophrenic boyfriend was taken away would be so sad, but it was. Not so much the scenario, but how this pedophile warped the kid's mind to think that what they were doing was love, it was very depressing. Truly one of the best characters was Agnes, Jill Clayburgh was amazing in her role and Agnes proved to be the saddest character of all. She might just be the only person Augusten can really call family in the end, and she's a mess of broken dreams and a dysfunctional family, seeming to be just a wacky old lady who eats dog kibble but becoming one of the most likable characters in the whole film.Running With Scissors deserves a 10/10 stars, no question about it. I can't believe it only has a current 6.2/10, so what if it doesn't follow the novel, it's still a profound, disturbing and somehow beautiful movie, despite every weird, disgusting and psychotic moment of the Finch family experience. I'd recommend it to anyone, it actually made me wish I lived in the 1970's, back when people still acted like people, not just texting on their cellphones like zombies... it's a movie that brings up ll kinds of emotion and ideas, that's not something many movies can do and you've got to give it credit for that.

I don't really like the idea of comparing the book to the movie, but in this case I find it inevitable. I read the book and loved it, but the movie just doesn't have the same skill.... For one thing, the movie really downplayed the oddity of the everything that went on, which was really what made the memoir so detail-oriented and real, I think. But the people who made the movie just didn't have the same skill with *their* craft.... For one thing, it was a little off to cast an actor like Alec Baldwin to be the father, who had such a minimal role, really. It also seemed at times like too much emphasis was placed on the mother-- in film I suppose it's easier to place emphasis on an adult, rather than a child (a child actor), but the whole thing was supposed to be about Augusten....I really think they should have considered using voiceovers/narration by Augusten to give some depth to his point-of-view, giving something to his own narrations and insights like in the book, rather than just showing him on the edge of the scene.... Without that deep feel for the characters idiosyncrasies and the individuality of the memoirist, it's just.... boring. They just show flatly this one doing this and that one doing that, but there's just no real appreciation for how crazy it all was. .... It sounds stupid and obvious to say that it should have been more like the book, but it really should have been.(7/10)

I am a big movie fan. I like movies of all types. This is arguably the worst movie I've ever seen.I get that it follows the book closely, which raises the point that not everything should be made into a movie. Especially since the authenticity of the experiences in the book have been called into question more than once.These characters are not quirky, they are mentally ill. The things that happen are not funny, they are disturbing; especially considering they are supposed to be true.This movie had the feel of The Royal Tenenbaums, another movie I hated, only Running With Scissors was even more dysfunctional and less funny.I will never get those hours back. I wanted to wash my brain after watching.