{"id":9753,"date":"2010-10-02T15:12:44","date_gmt":"2010-10-02T23:12:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=9753"},"modified":"2010-10-02T15:12:44","modified_gmt":"2010-10-02T23:12:44","slug":"its-kind-of-a-funny-story-anna-boden-ryan-fleck-2010-usa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=9753","title":{"rendered":"It’s Kind of a Funny Story (Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck, 2010): USA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Richard Feilden<\/a>. \u00a0Viewed at Camino Real Cinema, Goleta.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A suicidal teenager\u2019s woes might not seem like obvious source material for a romantic comedy, but in adapting Ned Vizzini\u2019s novel, that\u2019s where writer\/director team Anna Boden and\u00a0Ryan Fleck have gone with It\u2019s Kind of a Funny Story<\/a><\/em>.\u00a0 It\u2019s kind of a hit and miss affair, but it makes the target often enough for it to be worth a look.<\/p>\n

Craig (Keir Gilchrist, who I suspect will be doomed to a life of Justin Long comparisons) is a 16 year with a little too much stress in his life.\u00a0 A school for overachievers, a father who doesn\u2019t spend quite enough time with him, and a girl who doesn\u2019t really notice him, have him struggling to suppress suicidal thoughts, as well as keep his dinner down.\u00a0 So he checks himself into a psychiatric ward.\u00a0 There he discovers that, due to renovations, he will be bunking with the grown-ups.<\/p>\n

Of course, being on a psych ward he meets up with a group of kooky (but safe \u2013 this is a teen comedy, not One Flew Over the Cuckoo\u2019s Nest) patients and, this being a romance, one of them is an age-appropriate girl, Noelle (Emma Roberts).\u00a0 Being the only two teenagers on the ward (they must have scheduled the renovations due to an outbreak of teen sanity) they immediately embark on an awkward mating ritual.\u00a0 Soul searching and hilarity ensue.\u00a0 Kind of.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s get the bad out of the way first of all.\u00a0 Gilchrist and Noelle don\u2019t make a particularly interesting couple.\u00a0 In Gilchrist\u2019s case it\u2019s down to some uneven acting.\u00a0 Unless he\u2019s given a strong emotional drive to hang his performance on, he comes across as rather wooden.\u00a0 In Robert\u2019s case, it\u2019s more a lack of screen time and material to really dig into.\u00a0 She\u2019s on the ward due to self-harming, but aside from giving the character a reason to be there, the script never approaches this serious issue.\u00a0 This must surely be the only psychiatric ward where, when a girl who self harms becomes distraught, no one minds her locking herself in her room.<\/p>\n

The same is true for almost everyone on the ward.\u00a0 The conditions that keep the various patients in the hospital rarely manifest themselves as anything other than an excuse for a quick joke.\u00a0 From the drug-addled table tennis players to Gilchrist\u2019s projectile vomiting (are the film makers so desperate for a laugh that they have to rely on such things?\u00a0 This is slumming it in Miss March<\/em><\/a> territory), illness seem to exist to conjure up a cheap laugh, and the film suffers.<\/p>\n

With that dealt with, it\u2019s time to turn to the highlights of the film.\u00a0 The first is the visuals.\u00a0 From a beautiful opening shot travelling through a suspension bridge through the dream\/imagination sequences that pepper the film, it\u2019s really quite beautiful.\u00a0 The film makes abrupt stylistic changes whenever a fantasy sequence commences.\u00a0 The highlight is a minimalist animation that takes us on a flight through an imaginary cityscape, but others include a glam-rock production of Queen\/Bowie\u2019s Under Pressure and a 70s inflected memory of a less complicated youth.\u00a0 Occasionally the unmotivated hand-held camera work become a little distracting, but overall the film is a visual treat.<\/p>\n

The real saving grace of the film however is the performance given by Zach Galifianakis.\u00a0 As Bobby, he guides Craig through his days in the hospital, while the boy helps him come to terms with some of his own issues \u2013 issues that have apparently flummoxed the highly trained staff.\u00a0 By turns comedic and tragic, Galifianakis brings a level of subtlety to the role that I simply hadn\u2019t expected to see.\u00a0 Like Jim Cary, it may be that his best work will be found in the more serious roles I hope to see him take in the future.\u00a0 It will be a waste if he sticks to the \u2018crazy guy with the wild beard\u2019 routine.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s Kind of a Funny Story is definitely a mixed bag, but if you\u2019re willing to put up with the bad, the good will reward your patience.\u00a0 If you keep your expectations low, the parts that surprise you will definitely be kind of worth it.<\/p>\n

In the interest of full disclosure, It’s Kind of a Funny Story was screened free for members of the press and the public.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Richard Feilden. \u00a0Viewed at Camino Real Cinema, Goleta. A suicidal teenager\u2019s woes might not seem like obvious source material for a romantic comedy, but in adapting Ned Vizzini\u2019s novel, that\u2019s where writer\/director team Anna Boden and\u00a0Ryan Fleck have gone with It\u2019s Kind of a Funny Story.\u00a0 It\u2019s kind of a hit and miss […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9753\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}