THE WASHINGTON POST • FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2010
28
IT’S KIND OF A FUNNY STORY
Not much to get psyched about
by Ann Hornaday There’s very little that’s even kind of funny
in “It’s Kind of a Funny Story,” which can’t accurately be described as a comedy but isn’t a true drama, either. Keir Gilchrist stars as a Brooklyn high school student named Craig, who, pro- nouncing himself overwhelmed by “grades, girls, two wars, impending environmental catastrophe and an imploding economy,” commits himself to psychiatric care at a hos- pital. The youth ward is full, so Craig spends five days in the adult ward, where he learns lessons about life and growing up from its motley clientele. If you’re thinking “One Flew Over the Cuck-
oo’s Nest of a Boy, Interrupted,” you’re keying into one of the major problems with “It’s Kind of a Funny Story,” which is that so many ele- ments, from its setup to scenes of therapy ses- sions and hallway high jinks, seem as canned as the blandest dayroom Muzak. Gilchrist delivers an unobjectionable but undistinguished performance as a teenager whose journey ultimately feels frivolously low-stakes. And Emma Roberts has been woefully miscast as a patient named Noelle, who as a character reminiscent of Angelina Jolie’s volatile troubled child in “Girl, In- terrupted,” needs more ballast than Rob-
erts’s decidedly non-edgy persona. (The cud- dly whack-jobs who populate the rest of the ward are played in throwaway perform- ances by such otherwise terrific actors as Jeremy Davies, Daniel London and the re- doubtable Viola Davis, here completely wasted as Craig’s therapist.) The most memorable performance in “It’s Kind of a Funny Story” belongs to Zach Gal- ifianakis, most recently seen in “Dinner for Schmucks” and “The Hangover.” Galifiana- kis has the kind of portly deadpan presenta-
tion that made him amusing doing next to nothing in those movies. He’s amusing here, too, but he also manages to bring emotional gravitas to a character who, unlike Craig, stands to lose everything when his hitch at the hospital is up. Adapted from the Ned Vizzini novel by co-
directors Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden, “It’s Kind of a Funny Story” counts as a surpris- ing misfire from the team that brought audi- ences such assured, intimate films as “Half Nelson” and “Sugar.” Whereas those early ef-
K.C. BAILEY Keir Gilchrist, left, is the star, but Zach Galifianakis is the actor who shines in the otherwise bland “It’s Kind of a Funny Story.”
forts exuded ease and naturalism, the freeze frames and lip-syncing musical number in “It’s Kind of a Funny Story” feel forced and inauthentic. Let’s hope the team’s flirtation with too-hip-for-its-own-good filmmaking is as brief as Craig’s own mental health break.
hornadaya@washpost.com
PG-13. At area theaters. Contains obscenity, drug use, sensuality and poop humor. 115 minutes.
B½
YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER
A brooding and grim encounter
by Michael O’Sullivan
In keeping with its titular allusion to fate and fortunetelling, Woody Allen’s “You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger” opens with the paraphrase of a quote from “Macbeth.” Life, as narrator Zak Orth tells us in the in- congruously chirpy voice-over, is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury but ulti- mately signifying nothing. In terms of fatalism, Shakespeare’s doomed and gloomy Scotsman has nothing on Allen, a filmmaker who has long been known for his films’ dark obsessions: death, the meaninglessness of life (and also sex). “Stranger” is no exception. It’s filled with people stuck in, on the way out of or about to enter into unhappy and/or unwise relationships. It’s grim and slightly implausible, but not unrelentingly so. It’s a highbrow romantic farce, without the laughs. As the film opens, Alfie (Anthony Hop- kins) has just left his wife of 40 years, Hele- na (Gemma Jones). She “allowed herself to become old,” he says, with no sense of iro-
ny, to his much younger new flame — and soon-to-be second wife — Charmaine (Lu- cy Punch), a blowsy prostitute and gold digger. Helena, after an attempted suicide, has found solace in the counsel of a clairvoyant (Pauline Collins). Hence the title. Eventually, Helena takes up with Jona- than (Roger Ashton Griffiths), the eccen- tric, widowed owner of an occult book- store. But they can’t be together until Jona- than gets permission, via a seance, from his dead wife. “He left me for another woman,” Helena laments at one point, “a deceased one. They’re often the stiffest competition.” It’s a great crack, and in it you’ll hear a rare echo of the old Woody Al- len. But followers of his late work know not to expect too much more of it. Meanwhile, Alfie and Helena’s daughter Sally (Naomi Watts) is also fidgeting un- easily in her marriage to Roy (Josh Brolin), a doctor-turned-novelist who has had one good book and nothing since. Roy spends his days staring out their apartment win- dow at a pretty neighbor, Dia (Freida Pin- to). Incredibly, she reacts to his confession of almost stalker-level voyeurism by call- ing it “flattering.” Yeah, right. Maybe in the filmmaker’s fantasies. Let’s not forget Sally, an assistant at an
art gallery who’s developing a hopeless crush on her unhappily married boss, Greg. But he’s played by Antonio Banderas, so can you blame her?
GRAVIER PRODUCTIONS/SONY PICTURES CLASSICS
Helena (Gemma Jones) finds her love life governed by a dead woman, part of a network of ill-fitting or ill-fated relationships in Woody Allen’s latest film.
Of all the relationships, Alfie and Char-
maine’s is the most fully fleshed. As Allen has written it — and as Hopkins and Punch bring it to delightful life — it’s a bracing cocktail of comedy and pathos. “She’ll put a charge in his battery,” Roy tells Sally. Whenever she’s on screen, Punch does the same for the film. Into this romantic roundelay — which
otherwise sounds effervescently French, but is toned down by its dour London set- ting — Allen stirs in enough of his now
KEITH HAMSHERE/MEDIAPRO &
trademark theme of morality to keep things from ever getting too buoyant. A grave ethical transgression by one of the characters adds the most interesting plot twist, but the director squanders it, ending his film with an abruptness that will leave many unsatisfied. Speaking of twists, Allen seems to see himself here as a modern-day O. Henry. There’s a strong undercurrent of regret in the movie — of people making wrong deci- sions in an attempt to do the right thing — that smacks of “The Gift of the Magi.” “You see how ironic and beautiful life is?” Greg tells Sally, apropos of wanting something you can’t ever have. But wanting something you can’t have
or having something you don’t want isn’t really irony, is it? Or if it is, it’s certainly not the tragic kind that O. Henry wrote about. The self-engineered disappointments and dead-end relationships that Allen deals in are more reminiscent of Alanis Morissette, whose definition of irony, in her 1996 hit single “Ironic,” was: “It’s a black fly in your Chardonnay.” Okay, that’s a bummer. But like “You Will
Meet a Tall Dark Stranger,” it’s hardly enough to ruin your whole day.
osullivanm@washpost.com
R. At area theaters. Contains obscenity, sexual themes and references to an attempted suicide. 98 minutes.
B½
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