RUNNING WITH SCISSORS — ** — Joseph Cross, Annette Bening, Brian Cox; rated R (profanity, vulgarity, drugs, sex, violence).
"Running With Scissors" is mostly quirks. This adaptation of Augusten Burroughs' questionable memoir tries hard to be edgy and different — but it tries too hard.
The deliberate quirkiness and weirdness feels forced, making the whole thing feel more like a series of character skits than a narrative story. That makes it difficult to take any of the performances seriously, which is a shame, considering the cast.
Joseph Cross, who also has a supporting role in Clint Eastwood's "Flags of Our Fathers," stars here as Burroughs in this comedy-drama, which covers most of his adolescent years. The instability and eccentricities of Burroughs' mother, a would-be author (Annette Bening), has already led to a messy divorce. So when her therapist, the unorthodox Dr. Finch (Brian Cox), offers to take in her troubled teen while Deirdre sorts out her life, she quickly agrees.
However, life in the Finch household is miserable, so Augusten looks for an escape and begins an affair with Neil (Joseph Fiennes), an older, seemingly unbalanced patient of the good doctor.
The film does have style and features a terrific cast. Finch's other "children" are played by Gwyneth Paltrow and Evan Rachel Wood, while Jill Clayburgh plays his long-suffering wife.
But as they're written — by "Nip/Tuck" creator Ryan Murphy, who also directed — they come off more as caricatures than flesh-and-blood characters. Perhaps that's why Burroughs' supposedly reprehensible father (played here by Alec Baldwin) comes off more sympathetically than he probably should.
Still, the film isn't boring, and if anyone stands out, it's Bening, who nearly convinces us that these things really happened — some of them at least.
"Running With Scissors" is rated R for sexual language (including profanity, slang and suggestive talk), prescription drug use and abuse (various antidepressants), simulated sex and other sexual content (both gay and straight), and some domestic violence, as well as an attempted suicide. Running time: 116 minutes.
E-mail: jeff@desnews.com