"Running with Scissors" Should Have Been Cut Altogether

"Running With Scissors" is supposedly based on the personal memoirs of Augustan Burroughs. If there is any truth to that, then there is no doubt that truth is stranger than fiction because this film is bazaar with a huge B.

Augustan (played by Joseph Cross) seems doomed almost from the beginning of his life, with a self-absorbed, egocentric, narcissistic mother who is obviously bipolar and a soulless father (played by Alec Baldwin) who seems stuck in a permanent depression. In the beginning, Augustan adores his mother Deidre (played by Annette Bening). He believes her brilliant poetry is just being overlooked by a jealous and callous world. However, slowly but surely, he begins to realize that something is seriously wrong, not with his mother's work but with his mother herself.

Eventually, the family begins meeting with a very eccentric therapist named Dr. Finch (played by Brian Cox). The psychiatrist's advice ends up being anything but professional. He prescribes prescription after prescription for Deidre in an attempt to control her. He manipulates and he controls. He literally does everything that he can do to undermine the family unit, eventually managing to break up the family altogether. Agustan's father leaves and doesn't look back.

At Finch's suggestion, Deidre leaves her son in the care of Finch's overtly strange family which includes wife Agnes (played by Jill Clayburgh), and two daughters. One daughter, Natalie (played by Evan Rachel Wood) is a kindred spirit to Augustan. The other, played by Gwyneth Paltrow is a tightly wound example of what most liberals believe Christians to be, which is insulting to say the least.

Augustan struggles to find himself while surrounded by a series of tormented souls all of who are just as lost as he. Acting out, he skips school and institutes a sexual relationship with a man 20 years his senior (played by Joseph Fiennes). He even breaks down and tries to contact his father Norman in hopes of finding someone who will give him the support and guidance that he so desperately wants and needs. Nothing works so he just gives in.