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Craig (Keir Gilchrist), left, befriends a patient (Zach Galifianakis) in a hospital ward in the comic drama “It’s Kind of a Funny Story.” |
It’s kind of funny, yes.
Kind of serious, too.
Kind of sad as well.
Mostly, it’s kind of restrained and keeps its characters at an elbow’s length, just enough for us not to get inside them, know them or truly come to care about them, even as we find them likable.
“It’s Kind of a Funny Story” comes from critically celebrated directors Ryan Fleck and Anna Bolen, who gave us the moving high school drama “Half Nelson” and a little gem of a baseball feature, “Sugar.”
They have created their new movie based on Ned Vizzini’s autobiographical novel as a comic adolescent revamping of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” by taking a gentle view of a hospital’s mental ward through the eyes of a suicidal teenage boy.
Craig (Keir Gilchrist) doesn’t seem to have a real reason to feel depressed and suicidal.
True, his parents (Lauren Graham and Jim Gaffigan) don’t get him. Dad does say thoughtless things that undermine Craig’s self worth. And Craig’s little sister is no walk in the park of self-esteem, either.
He silently covets his best friend’s hot girlfriend Nia (Zoe Kravitz), and that, plus pressure at school, doesn’t help his frame of mind.
It doesn’t matter that we don’t see why Craig would feel depressed enough to contemplate suicide.
He just does. (Read more…)