Teenager movies make me fucking cynical, because they're so profoundly meaningless. I used to watch them piled on a bed with a handful of my fellow adolescent friends and love interests, in a bedroom seeping with hormones, and they filled me with unexplainable existential sadness. I later found out that it's because they all say the same thing: ''everything is going to be all right. You're going to get the girl and everybody's admiration and you're awesome at the core of your being, it's just that everbody else is too immature to see it''.
It's that kind of thinking that transformed Occidental society into an asshole factory. IT'S KIND OF A FUNNY STORY is kind of a teenage movie, but only kind of. It's a movie with a beating heart, written by talented people, and yet it lacks the assertiveness and the commitment to make a powerful point about its theme, mental illness.
Craig (Keir Gilchrist) is a kid suffering from clinical depression. One morning, he first the courage to check himself in the psychiatric ward, but immediatly regrets when he's confronted to the suffering of others. You can't just walk away from that place once you're admitted though. There is a minimal 5 days evaluation you have to go through. So Craig is going to have to face himself, and he discovers that when you put your shoulders into it sometimes, things aren't so bad. People in the ward are used to be judged, so none of them are particularly keen on judging others. Ward veteran Bobby (Zach Galifianakis) takes Craig under his wing and shows him that there is a fine line between being crazy and ill.
IT'S KIND OF A FUNNY STORY had been destroyed by the critics and yet it's been a hit with the audiences. Why is that so? It's a well written movie about mental illness. If you've been anywhere around the issue yourself, you'll understand. For example, when Craig checks himself in at the E.R, he's trying to explain the doctor that he fears what he can do to himself. He doesn't have the precise words, but his latent fear is palpable.
Another example is the absolute dissonance and incomprehension that goes in between what's happening inside and outside the ward. Mental illness is still a misunderstood issue and Craig gets into every layer of misunderstanding with the people in his life outside, from his friends who are intrigued to his family who has difficulty assessing the seriousness of the situation. IT'S KIND OF A FUNNY story does a good job at displaying that if it's not happening to you, it's extremely difficult to understand, and that the best thing you can do is not judge.
Zoë Kravitz made me feel like a pervert scumbag in this movie, and she's like 25 years old!
The best way I can possibly explain the viewing experience of IT'S KIND OF A FUNNY STORY is watching a friend of yours draw something beautiful, only to tear it to shreds after your complimented him/her. It's a coming-of-age movie that ultimately trivializes the issue of mental illness and this angers me to no end. IT'S KIND OF A FUNNY STORY takes all this time to depict mental illness in a proper light, only to conclude that MAYBE you just need a little love to get better, that MAYBE you just need the proper friends and to express yourself. Maybe you need to channel that negativity. Blah blah blah. I know IT'S KIND OF A FUNNY STORY doesn't mean harm, but it's bound by the shackles of its genre and sends the wrong fucking message. Plenty of mentally ill people have all the love they can get and still choose oblivion over life because they have a problem with their brain, you condescending pricks.
Mental health is a sensitive issue for me. If you want to know what it is to live with this affliction, I invite you to read this piece, by the talented Sam Hawken. I'm all for mainstream movie to discuss the issue, and I think it's fair to say that IT'S KIND OF A FUNNY STORY does its part. Especially for a teenager movie that's supposed to make you feel cuddly. I suppose it's a movie with an interesting dual nature, but the laziness it showed in order to stay in the proper tone of its target audience angered me enough to make me shake my fist at my television screen. You cannot catch a mental illness like you catch the flu and clear yourself forever with 5 days of quarantine. You're not helping if you say everything will forever be OK again *.
* I know the movie is based on a novel by Ned Vizzini. I haven't read it, so I'm going to leave it out of the discussion and judge IT'S KIND OF A FUNNY STORY for what it presents itself to be.