Running with Scissors (2006)

I know this is supposedly based on a true story, but I have to wonder how much embellishment went into Augusten Burrough's (and subsequently, this film's) narrative. 'Cause I don't care how "true" it is, I don't believe a minute of it. Self-consciously wacky and "naughty," it suggests what would be left if Little Miss Sunshine preceded that kitschy cross-country trip with 90 minutes of smug ain't-this-family-weird hijinx. Even more aggravating is the final thirty minutes, in which the film does an about face; characters betray that which has been set out for them in the previous three-quarters and the cheap pathos flows like wine at a Dionysian orgy. This touchy-feely nonsense, only vaguely related to the quirky nonsense prior to it, is pure Hollywood cloth. It's awful all the way around, basically, with only a incandescently sleazy Evan Rachel Wood performance to keep it from total waste. Anyone who's ever longed to see a scene wherein Brian Cox tries to divine the future from his bowel movement, shot from the perspective of that bowel movement, is welcome to this crap. Everyone else should probably just read the book.

Grade: D+