52
Metascore
32 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 70Village VoiceVillage VoiceLike the book, this deadpan celebration of neurosis makes a valiant effort to repress its comedy--which of course makes it funnier.
- 70The New York TimesA.O. ScottThe New York TimesA.O. ScottMs. Bening's precise, pitiless tracing of her character's decline from feisty defiance to pathetic, overmedicated self-delusion gives the film an emotional weight it might not otherwise have.
- 60The Hollywood ReporterFrank ScheckThe Hollywood ReporterFrank ScheckToo outlandish to be fully convincing, this adaptation of the best-selling memoir sacrifices subtlety for broad laughs.
- 50VarietyJustin ChangVarietyJustin ChangWriter-director Ryan Murphy strives mightily to capture the bracing hilarity, pathos and surreal incident of Burroughs' bestselling memoir, but this rudderless adaptation never gets a firm grip on the author's deadpan tone or episodic narrative style.
- 50Entertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumEntertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumWatching Running With Scissors the movie instead of reading Running With Scissors the best-selling memoir by Augusten Burroughs is like running with a spatula, or maybe some weird toast tongs.
- 50Wall Street JournalWall Street JournalMs. Bening takes her part and acts it all over the place, while Ms. Paltrow and Ms. Wood do their best theater of the absurd. It is left to Ms. Clayburgh, in a performance free of vanity and artifice, to find the movie's heart.
- 50USA TodayClaudia PuigUSA TodayClaudia PuigRunning With Scissors lacks the edge of Augusten Burroughs' best-selling memoir. The result is an inconsistent tragicomedy that attempts to be cut from the same darkly humorous cloth as "American Beauty," but fails.
- 40L.A. WeeklyElla TaylorL.A. WeeklyElla TaylorOne expects neither subtlety nor surprise from a scenario boasting a household pet named Freud. If there's any reason at all to see Running With Scissors, it' Bening.
- 40Los Angeles TimesCarina ChocanoLos Angeles TimesCarina ChocanoMurphy, who created the creepy, funny, lunatic "Nip/Tuck," is a master of mordant and macabre camp. But here he loses his teeth, seeming to lack any ironic distance from material that practically begs for it.
- 38PremiereGlenn KennyPremiereGlenn KennyFor the most part, Murphy is pitching somewhere between "American Beauty" and "The Royal Tenenbaums"; indeed, the characters Bening and Gwyneth Paltrow play in Scissors are, in a sense, inversions of their roles in Beauty and Tenenbaums, respectively.