Girl, Interrupted - review



Some astounding and amazing movies about insanity have been made. There's "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest", which asks the question whether anyone can objectively say what's normal and what's crazy. There's "Twelve Monkeys", which wonders where reality ends and imagination begins. "Girl, Interrupted", however, neither astounds nor amazes. It doesn't provoke outrage about the psychiatric profession, which is portrayed as fumbling but basically adequate. It doesn't make you doubt your definition of sanity: the patients in the mental hospital in this movie are there for a reason, even though they may not all be very dangerous. In short, it's probably realistic but never very engaging or provoking. What seemed to me the most interesting part of the story, namely, the sessions with the psychiatrists, is almost completely absent. And so we are in the dark as to the nature and origin of the main character's illness, if any.
What saves a plot and script that could have been a TV movie with a title ending in "The Susanna Kaysen Story" are the actresses. Winona Ryder, also an executive producer of the film, is convincing as the slightly disturbed Susanna, but she is out-acted by Angelina Jolie, who keeps up a defiant kiss-my-ass superiority down to the very end of the film, where she has a very convincing breakdown. Whoopi Goldberg and Vanessa Redgrave are both as good as you'd expect them to be. But apart from the acting, there's not much of a spark in this movie.

Posted by cronopio at 12:52 AM, October 15, 2001 | Comments (0)