By American culture isn’t usually very nice to people with mental health issues. Depression is becoming a bit more mainstream (thanks a lot hipsters), but in general, the rest of the patients in the psych ward are still ostracized for being weird. Admit it, no one’s lining up to eat lunch with the Schizophrenic kid or taking the time to visit the chronically anxious shut in who is afraid of the world outside their room.
It feels that most of the time, our culture encounters these diseases with the sensitivity of a double-condomed douchebag. Mental health patients are written as slapstick comic relief or Frankenstein’s monster and rarely fall in a range in between that. Worse than that, it seems that no one can tackle these issues without being super depressing or capturing a wildly inaccurate picture of what mental health patients really go through.
That’s why it took an insider.
It’s Kind of a Funny Story is an adaptation of a book by the same name based on the author’s own experience with hospitalization. The movie follows Craig (played by Keir Gilchrist of United States of Tara fame) thr
American culture isn't usually very nice to people with mental health issues. Depression is becoming a bit more mainstream (thanks a lot hipsters), but in general, the rest of the patients in the psych ward are still ostracized for being weird. Admit it, no one's lining up to eat lunch with the Schizophrenic kid or taking the time to visit the chronically anxious shut in who is afraid of the world outside their room.
It feels that most of the time, our culture encounters these diseases with the sensitivity of a double-condomed douchebag. Mental health patients are written as slapstick comic relief or Frankenstein's monster and rarely fall in a range in between that. Worse than that, it seems that no one can tackle these issues without being super depressing or capturing a wildly inaccurate picture of what mental health patients really go through.
That's why it took an insider.{{page_break}}
It's Kind of a Funny Story is an adaptation of a book by the same name based on the author's own experience with hospitalization. The movie follows Craig (played by Keir Gilchrist of United States of Tara fame) through a brief contemplation of suicide and his decision to check himself into a local mental hospital.
Craig is an overstressed teenager who comes from a surprisingly realistic family. His parents, while perhaps a bit one-dimensional due to a lack of screen time, don't feel too exaggerated. His father (Jim Gaffigan) is a workaholic who has high expectations of his son, but seems to genuinely have his best intentions at heart. His mother (Lauren Graham) has a much more believable reaction to her son’s hospitalization.
Though his parents are the cause of a bit of his stress, the viewer never gets the feeling that the movie casts Craig as a helpless victim. His anxiety is as much self-inflicted as it is perpetuated by his parents, and it’s refreshing to see the writers forcing the character to take responsibility for his problems instead of taking the all too common “Daddy Issues” route.
The majority of the movie is spent in the hospital, chronicling Craig’s stay. The movie introduces the audience to a wide range of patients and doctors, and allows the viewer to interact with them in a way that feels comfortable. The residents of the psych ward scatter into a wide variety of disease categories, and the directors did a remarkable job of putting all of the characters in a context where you could laugh at them and care for them at the same time.
The hospital has the depressing, bleak tones that you’d expect, but not every moment in recovery matches the backdrop. There are scary, tragic, funny, and heartwrenching moments, and the movie isn’t afraid to explore each of them with respect and honesty.
Another major theme the movie succeeds at examining is the shame that those inside the psych ward feel around those outside. Craig’s main concern upon admittance into the hospital isn’t his life-threatening depression; it’s ensuring that no one at his school finds out about his whereabouts. His friends (another huge source of stress) struggle to understand what’s happening to Craig, and the results are an emotional, candid snapshot of relationships that the directors should be commended for.
The greatest relationship in the movie is also its most enigmatic. Zach Galifinakis plays a repeat patient in the ward that seems all too comfortable with the ecosystem he lives in. For the most of the movie he feels as if he is outside of the system, never granting Craig (or the audience) access to the details of his background or his character.
In this, the directors find their greatest narrative success. He is such an endearing character that you want to know as much about him as possible and help him overcome whatever is plaguing him, but the directors, like the character himself, is content to put his story aside to help move Craig to genuine healing. Galifinakis gives a stunning performance that is at once calm, cool, raw and heartbreaking.
It’s Kind of a Funny Story is an entertaining film. It’s a movie that’s not afraid to leave its ending ambiguous and the characters’ myriad issues unresolved. The ending is genuinely satisfying, but it is not a neat package wrapped up in a perfect bow. The movie’s characters developed in an organic way, but they are not all fixed. Craig, like all of us, must emerge from the film’s events to face a world rife with pressures and anxiety. It is overwhelming at times, but the movie (and Bob Dylan) helps us to reassess our lives by showing us what is vitally important: “That he not busy being born is busy dying.”
Review Score: 9.42
Is it actually worth paying money to see? Yes.