Running on empty
Scissors offers poor retelling of Burroughs true story
Running with Scissors looked like it could be the next Royal Tenenbaums. An all-star cast playing a bunch of wackier-than-life characters who survive their dismal lives on irony and wit. But there's one major difference between the two: Scissors has no heart.
Call it cliché if you must, but in this case it couldn't be more true. While the Tenenbaum family was eccentric and sometimes despicable, they were ultimately lovable characters with very human flaws. The characters in Scissors, however, are neither lovable nor human.
Based on his real-life memoirs, Scissors depicts the bizarre adolescence of Augusten Burroughs (Joseph Cross). After his alcoholic father (Alec Baldwin) is forced to leave by the child's growingly insane mother (Annette Bening), Augusten is sent to live with his mother's therapist, Dr. Finch (Brian Cox). There he encounters the Finches, who quickly become his new family.
Of all these interesting characters, none are believable, as each feels like a complete caricature. Director / screenwriter Ryan Murphy apparently left in all the biases present in the book's first-person narration. Unfortunately, this doesn't carry over well into the film, which is not clearly told in the first person. The effect is confusing, leaving the audience unsure of exactly what is real and what has been exaggerated. Even 13-year-old Augusten feel completely authentic as he, for example, unflinchingly has sexual relations with a 33-year-old mental patient. Without being able to empathize with any of the characters, their eccentricities aren't so much quirky as they are painful. Without knowing who to root for in this series of bizarre conflicts, one can only root for it all to be over.
Scissors brings in a great cast to portray the unbelievable true memoirs of Augusten Burroughs. Unfortunately, they are unable to make up for a poor retelling of the story. This is one of those cases where people will say “The book was better than the movie,” and probably be right.
