Running with Scissors" is based on the personal memoirs of Augusten Burroughs. Growing up in the 1970's, young Augusten (Joseph Cross) was living a middle-class existence with an alcoholic father (Alec Baldwin) and a bipolar mother (Annette Bening), an unpublished poet with delusions of becoming famous. When his parents divorce, Augusten's mother sends him to live with her wildly unorthodox psychiatrist, Dr. Finch (Brian Cox) and his eccentric extended family. "Running with Scissors" chronicles Augusten's survival under the most extraordinary of circumstances.
I had read the book this movie was based on and had a hard enough time getting through that due to some of the graphic subject matter. The only thing that made me push through to the end of the book was the really funny and sarcastic undertone to the writing. Unfortunately, that was the one thing that the filmmakers weren't able to convey in the film version. It was a lot dryer than the book and made the lunacy of it all that much more unbearable. WW and I didn't even bother sticking around to the end.
I wouldn't recommend anyone paying the rental fee for this one or bothering to sit through it when it hits cable. It's one of those artsy movies that makes you wonder what kind of freaks
"artsy" people are.
