With "It's Kind of a Funny Story," Fleck and Boden's first film based on a novel, it's a different story, capped — rightly or wrongly — by an extremely happy ending the filmmakers do their best to earn. They've adapted Ned Vizzini's young-adult best-seller about a teenage boy's five days spent in a Brooklyn psychiatric hospital. The point of view belongs to Craig ( Keir Gilchrist), a 16-year-old under persistent pressure from his parents ( Jim Gaffigan and Lauren Graham) to produce a crackerjack entrance essay for a schmantzy summer school program. Depressed and off his Zoloft, Craig considers suicide but calls a hot line instead.
This is the third feature from the writing-directing team of Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden. Their first film,
cheap coach handbag, "Half Nelson," gave Ryan Gosling his most interesting role to date as a heroin-addicted high school teacher. Their second, an even richer character study called "Sugar," followed a Dominican baseball player as he travels to America to make his bid for the majors, encountering Arizona diner menus and Iowa cornfields and (ensuring an excellent film's boxoffice failure) a career path quite unlike his initial great expectations.
Some films are at once disappointing and successful,
coach poppy tote bags, worth seeing despite the limitations of their source material. How so? Let "It's Kind of a Funny Story" explain it all for you.
" Fleck and Boden's first film based on a novel
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