It's Kind of a Funny Story (2010)
Directed by Anna Boden
A clinically depressed teenager gets a new start after he checks himself into an adult psychiatric ward.
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What critics compared It's Kind of a Funny Story to
The obvious touchstone for “It’s Kind of a Funny Story” is “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” Milos Forman’s classic film based on Ken Kesey’s breakthrough novel.
Running the gamut from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" to "Girl, Interrupted," psych ward movies have long captured the imagination of the world's filmmakers.
And yet just a few hours after that conversation, I found myself seriously debating getting up and walking out of "It's Kind Of A Funny Story," an agonizingly phony piece of work that struggles to be a sort of "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" for teenagers, but which ends up regurgitating platitudes in place of any genuine insight or emotion.
This contrivance means that Craig gets to befriend messed-up grown ups like Bobby (Zack Galiflanakis, in a mellower take on One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest's Randle McMurphy) and share a room with a muttering Egyptian man named Muqtada (Bernard White) while at the same time falling for the teenaged cutter Noelle (Emma Roberts) down the hall.
A sweet-natured One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest for the teen set, It's Kind of a Funny Story is based on a young-adult novel, so clichés can be expected.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest meets the coming-of-age movie in It’s Kind of a Funny Story, the third feature from the Brooklyn-based indie writing-directing duo of Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden following their acclaimed Half Nelson and Sugar .
"Queen of Earth" feels like it's trying to fit in the same mold as films such as "It's Kind of a Funny Story," "The Beaver," or "Melancholia," but it is a film that is stripped entirely of enjoyment.
In a fast-moving montage, Charles and Erik round up Angel Salvadore (Zoë Kravitz, "It's Kind of a Funny Story"), a stripper with wings; Sean Cassidy (Caleb Landry Jones, "The Last Exorcism"), a rejected kid able to emit high pitched sound waves; cab driver Armando Muñoz (Edi Gathegi, "Twilight's" Laurent), an immigrant with a talent for self preservation and Alex Summers (Lucas Till, "Battle: Los Angeles"), a young prison inmate who can radiate missile-like energy.