Running with Scissors (2006)
Directed by Ryan Murphy
Young Augusten Burroughs absorbs experiences that could make for a shocking memoir: the son of an alcoholic father and an unstable mother, he's handed off to his mother's therapist, Dr. Finch, and spends his adolescent years as a member of Finch's bizarre extended family.
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What critics compared Running with Scissors to
For the most part, Murphy is pitching somewhere between American Beauty and The Royal Tenenbaums; indeed, the characters Bening and Gwyneth Paltrow play in Scissors are, in a sense, inversions of their roles in Beauty and Tenenbaums, respectively.
They can offer serious drama by investing the time and energy to develop complex characters or they can opt to traverse a more comedic path, incorporating wit and humor (consider The Royal Tenenbaums).
Insanely funny and strangely moving, the oddball family in this darkly cynical comedy makes "The Royal Tenenbaums" seem normal.
The standard comparison of Running with Scissors to the films of Wes Anderson (The Royal Tenenbaums) is at once apt and completely beside the point.
When done moderately well or aimed at niche audiences (Home for the Holidays, The Family Stone, The Royal Tenenbaums), they score middling success.
Watching poor Freud reconstituted as dinner put me in mind of two things: Stephen King's Pet Sematary and Paltrow's far more emotionally urgent turn in Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums â Running With Scissors' far more appealing comedic twin.
The craggy Brian Cox (“Running with Scissors”) handles the role with a perfect balance of bluster and eye for publicity.
Director Ryan Murphy is no stranger to the form — his other feature directorial credit is “Running with Scissors,” also based on a memoir.
And that's because his sophomore big screen follow-up to 2006's "Running With Scissors" is an adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert's 2006 memoir, "Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia."
Murphy ( Running with Scissors ) doesn’t scold Liz for indulging, or even turn it into an act that is indeed naughty -- he just lets her be to enjoy her newfound freedom.
Co-written and directed by Ryan Murphy (known for the “Glee” cult phenomenon, but also the architect of the 2006 bomb, “Running with Scissors”), “Eat Pray Love” is utterly confused, incapable of finding humanity inside of Liz that would illuminate her crisis of heart.
His previous film adapted another memoir, Augusten Burroughs’s “Running With Scissors.’’
Murphy, who proved a deft hand at turning the difficult novel Running With Scissors into an entertaining movie, captures the spirit of the three destinations well, only occasionally making it feel like a travelogue.