Add cheerfully inclined director Ron Howard and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman, responsible for mediocre Hollywood generica like “Batman and Robin” and “Practical Magic,” and you can almost be sure that the end product will be in the ghastly tradition of films like “Shine,” “Nell” and “Patch Adams,” with their bogus sympathy and showboating lead performances.
To depict the rarefied demons of mental illness, screenwriter Akiva Goldsman, taking a cue from his Batman and Robin, invents not one sidekick for poor Nash but three: a bumptious roommate named Charles (Paul Bettany), a little girl named Marcee (Vivien Cardone), and a CIA spook named Parcher (Ed Harris, who after playing a mentally ill person in Pollock plays a symptom here).