Running with Scissors 2006

Connie Ogle, Miami Herald: Anyone who has watched 10 minutes of Nip/Tuck knows [director] Murphy is adept at cramming all sorts of weirdness into a couple of hours, but in Running With Scissors he turns out to be inexplicably squeamish. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: Running with Scissors looks great, and works fine when Bening is on screen; otherwise, it's off-balance, teetering where it should hold steady. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: Every beat of the picture has the ring of pushy inauthenticity, and despite all the outre eccentricities, a plodding lack of uniqueness. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: Ryan Murphy's jaunty screen version of Running With Scissors proves that nothing consecrates one's depiction of a narcissistic mother like having her embodied by Annette Bening. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: Maybe all this really happened, but I didn't believe a second of it as portrayed. Read more

Joanne Kaufman, Wall Street Journal: The laughter elicited by Running with Scissors tends to be of the embarrassed sort, the impact of its neglected child horror story blunted. Blame it on the movie's high-camp gloss; it trivializes what is far from trivial. Read more

Richard Roeper, Ebert & Roeper: In the real world, mental illness is a serious problem. In this film, it gives everyone a license to run around like characters in a Lewis Carroll story -- all of it set to predictable pop hits from the 1970s. Read more

Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: A blunt-edged, disappointing adaptation of Augusten Burroughs' best-selling (albeit embellished) memoir about growing up among mad people in the 1970s. Read more

Tasha Robinson, AV Club: Running With Scissors is full of horrible people doing horrible things. Read more

Bill Muller, Arizona Republic: The movie lacks the immediacy of other tales of suburban dysfunction, such as American Beauty, but the performances carry it along swiftly. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: The book has had its darkest, least-forgiving details sanded off for the multiplex. Read more

Carina Chocano, Los Angeles Times: The director seems to buy the author's fond auto-enshrinement wholesale and everyone gets hurt. Read more

Bruce Westbrook, Houston Chronicle: It's one of the most clear-headed -- and twistedly entertaining -- views of drug dependency and insanity I've ever seen. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: A mood-swinging, often amusing version of Augusten Burroughs' tart, best-selling memoir. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: Just as the title implies, Running with Scissors falls down and impales itself at nearly every turn. It's one big uh-oh and ouch of a movie. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: The experience is unusual - zany, even - but not nearly as dangerous or exhilarating as one would hope from the recklessness the title implies. Read more

Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press: Running with Scissors feels like nothing more than one of the many current TV series that appeal to viewers looking for edgy entertainment. Read more

Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News: Sadly, the movie version is a dull-edged instrument that struggles to conjure the book's piercing internal voice. Read more

Ella Taylor, L.A. Weekly: Commendably at pains to avoid whining self-pity, the movie reaches for black comedy and comes up empty of anything more than strained burlesque. Read more

Christy Lemire, Associated Press: Ultimately, the outlandishness of this life seems just too much to bear -- if not for Augusten himself, who miraculously comes out stronger, then certainly for the audience. Read more

Jan Stuart, Newsday: It's an oddly drab and disconnected experience, neither as raucously funny nor as moving as it wants us to think it is. Read more

Lisa Rose, Newark Star-Ledger: The film is more a sideshow than a satire, and while it has a certain morbid allure, it doesn't succeed in replicating the charm of the novel. Read more

Jack Mathews, New York Daily News: Running With Scissors is a reasonable facsimile of a perversely funny book whose odd characters are given life by a terrific cast. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: This is an Igby Goes Down without the laughs, a morbid miscalculation of The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou size. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: As dysfunctional family movies go, this is one skip. It doesn't just run with the scissors, it falls on them. Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com: It's Baldwin, in a relatively small role, who nearly blows the whole movie apart. Read more

Ruthe Stein, San Francisco Chronicle: The cast works hard to keep up the momentum of Running With Scissors. Its flaws are (director Ryan) Murphy's fault. He flails around seeking the right tone and never quite finds it. Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: By turns cruel, self-pitying, and mordantly witty, [Bening] makes living with a delusional psychotic seem like the adventure of a lifetime. Read more

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Read more

Kate Taylor, Globe and Mail: This comedy, adapted by writer and director Ryan Murphy from the real Augusten Burroughs' apparently truthful memoir of the same title, wears a deep and sophisticated shade of black and is also very, very sad. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: The perception gap between an author's words on the printed page and how they translate to the screen has never yawned so widely as it does for Running With Scissors, a black comedy more likely to provoke upchucks than yuks. Read more

Time Out: Read more

Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out: Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: What is lost in the translation from book to movie is emotional subtlety and pathos, which, to be fair, were in short supply to start. Read more

Justin Chang, Variety: The royally screwed-up adolescence of Augusten Burroughs has made it to the bigscreen with several nips, tucks and a noticeably duller edge in Running With Scissors. Read more

Rob Nelson, Village Voice: Tone is everything in a dark-comic farce, and Murphy pulls it off. Like the book, this deadpan celebration of neurosis makes a valiant effort to repress its comedy -- which of course makes it funnier. Read more

Stephen Hunter, Washington Post: When Bening is all wound up and blowing the rafters off as the demented, repulsive/charming, self-deluded Dierdre, the movie has an engine. You may not approve, but the great Bening is so captivating you cannot look away. Read more