Running with Scissors (DVD)

Wow, I expected a bad movie, but I was still curious since this movie did get a little bit of early buzz. However, I should have let well enough alone as Running with Scissors is one of the worst films I have seen in a long time.

Based on the life and the personal memoirs of Augusten Burroughs this film tells the story of Burroughs as played by Joseph Cross and the terrible adolescence he had with a mother (Annette Bening) who is as crazy as they come, a father (Alec Baldwin) who just isn't there and doesn't care, a lover in 37-year-old Joseph Fiennes and an adopted caretaker in the form of Brian Cox who incidentally is also Augusten's mother's shrink. Directed by Ryan Murphy, creator of "nip/tuck," I expected far more from this film. Instead, all I got was a story that no one would care about with Annette Bening acting like Sharon Stone at every turn. Oddly, there was award buzz around Bening's performance in this film that registers a 29% at Rotten Tomatoes, but if that is the case then Sharon Stone needs a nomination for every role she has ever had because Bening tapped into about as much Catherine Tramell (Basic Instinct) as she grabbed bits from Stone's performance in Casino as Ginger McKenna.

After about 20 minutes of the film I was ready to throw it off the balcony, but I expected maybe an 80-minute runtime based on the style of film this is. Instead, I grabbed the box and saw it was two hours long, and yet I continued to watch just so I could tell you how bad it was. This film is referred to as "One of the funniest movies of the year!" by The New York Observer, which means I will not ever be taking the Observer's advice and that a conversation with Andrew Sarris has the potential to be "One of the most boring conversations ever!"

Special features include look at the cast, an interview with Augusten Burroughs and a making of featurette. If you think I watched a second of any of those you can guess again, two hours of watching this mess was enough for me I will leave the featurettes to Sarris. Let him waste his own time, mine is too important and so is my life, because I might have killed myself if I had watched anymore of this disc.

To say I don't recommend you ever watch this film is an understatement. To say that I encourage you to avoid any store that carries it would be pushing it. To say I think you should question the sanity of anyone that enjoyed it or found it funny is spot on.