The flow of the film is as manic as Burroughs’ mother. Newcomer Joseph Cross plays the difficult role of Burroughs and nicely captures the character: a child wise beyond his years, forced to grow up yet trapped with the ghost of his mother and his dysfunctional adopted family. The famous Gwyneth Paltrow and Joseph Fiennes are flat, their characters unbelievable, while less renowned Jill Clayburgh brings humanity to the cartoonish wife of Dr. Although Annette Benning may upstage Baldwin in her appropriately over-the-top performance as the larger-than-life mother and poet Deirdre, Baldwin delivers a subtle performance with the hopeless desperation that the screenplay fails to carry from the book.ĭespite a laundry list of who’s who in Hollywood, the film depends on its lesser-known actors for momentum. At this point, she has already scared away his alcoholic father, played by the fabulous Alec Baldwin. The film glosses over Burroughs’ early childhood in a series of short scenes, leaving the story unanchored until his manic-depressive, narcissist mother leaves the 13-year-old Augusten in the custody of her manipulative, pill-pushing therapist Dr.

However, films rarely live up to their literary counterparts, and Nip/Tuck director Ryan Murphy has clearly made some nips and tucks that have left the story dull. With sex, drugs, smutty language and a slew of one-liners, Augusten Burroughs’ memoir Running With Scissors has all the ingredients of a great blockbuster.

Running with scissors burroughs