A Rude Interruption

I recently watched the movie Girl, Interrupted. It wasn't really that I'd heard great things about the film, but I knew it featured a real powerhouse cast -- including Angelina Jolie, in a role that won her an Academy Award. Besides her, there's Winona Ryder, Clea DuVall, Brittany Murphy, Elisabeth Moss, Jared Leto, Jeffrey Tambor, Vanessa Redgrave, and Whoopi Goldberg. It's a "deep bench."

Unfortunately, they aren't in the service of much. You can see why the film would attract a number of good actors; there are a lot of histrionics, meaty scenes to emote over. Characters have strange quirks and mannerisms that are the sort of challenge that many actors love to try and pull off convincingly. And for the most part, they do.

It's just that there's really nothing to the story here. In the late 60s, Winona Ryder's character is a young woman diagnosed with a vague mental disorder and convinced by her parents to check herself temporarily into a psychiatric hospital. But her temporary stay rolls on for a year as she moves from questioning if she belongs there to truly believing she does.

It's a sort of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest for women, minus the villainous Nurse Ratched. (Whoopi Goldberg's nurse is quite the opposite kind of character.) People bounce off the walls and holler, but the script doesn't set up many truly deep situations, doesn't say anything profound, and doesn't make you feel much of anything.

If you like carefully tuned performances, you might find the film worthwhile. But by the same token, every one of these actors has done superior work in some other film. It'll take you longer to watch all those others, but you'll find it more satisfying in the end. This movie, I rate only a D+.