A Coming-of-Age Tale, Set Among the Sad

At the emergency room, trying to explain himself to a busy doctor (Aasif Mandvi), Craig both underplays and exaggerates the seriousness of his problem, which is itself evidence of his confused, unhappy state. He is suffering from a form of depression that is not mild so much as quiet. The connection between adolescent angst and the tough terrain of mental illness is more than clinical – it’s artistic. If a movie about schizophrenia, delusion and attempted suicide can be called pleasant, even mild-mannered, this is that movie. Starring: Keir Gilchrist, Zach Galifianakis, Emma Roberts, Viola Davis, Zoe Kravitz. Through his eyes, we get to know a deeply frustrated patient (Zach Galifianakis) and a wise psychiatrist (Viola Davis) just well enough to realize that they’re more than stock types. There are attendants with pills, a sloping lawn with a garden, perhaps, and poems to read or Nick Drake to bob your melancholy head to. Let the healing begin. (See TIME’s Fall Entertainment Guide.) ? ?The movie is an adaptation of Ned Vizzini’s young adult novel, and shares with it the central gag that Craig is stuck with the adult crazies since the children’s psych ward is being remodeled. And while the film flirts with convention in a triangle involving Craig and two girls of his dreams, it still manages to feel down-to-earth.

And he’s the first to deflate his own ego. And in It’s Kind of a Funny Story , a smart but suicidal 16-year-old comes up against the real world of a New York City mental facility – well, kind of, like the title says. He also appears, very briefly, with glitter stuck in his beard. Oddly, despite Galifianakis being the funniest character here, he’s also the only person who seems to be taking all of this seriously or, more specifically, he understands when to be serious and when to be lighthearted. Despite the pleasant, loopy energy and fine performances ? Galiflanakis conjures a surprisingly sad character, and I grew fond of Gilchrist, with his impenetrable black eyes and rosebud mouth ? you walk out of it shaking your head. And Gilchrist hangs on to the central role without calling too much attention to the fact that the character is off his meds in a post-9/11 world that seems about to collapse. And on Nov. 5, he dons skinny jeans and an ill-advised scarf to play Ethan Tremblay, a wannabe actor with father hang-ups who embarks on a cross-country road trip with a very unwilling Robert Downey Jr . in Due Date . And because there’s construction in the juvenile wing, he finds himself on the floor with the grown-up mental patients: the catatonic, the schizophrenic, and the Galifianakis – as in Zach. They’re usually very self-aware and understated, and clearly capable of capturing troubled youth in an authentic manner, but here they end up indulging in faux-tortured narcisissm and it doesn’t feel right. It’s a teen romance with a public service message, like cinema’s cooler answer to the ABC Afterschool Special. (The generations that grew up on those lessons in the 70s, 80s and early 90s mocked them mercilessly, but have we been able to forget them?) Teen suicide is a lamentable problem that doesn’t seem to be going away. Perhaps it has to do with the awkward genre a sort of PG-rated One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest , set within a romantic-comedy framework, perforated with somewhat bland teenagers, one of whom substitutes Jack Nicholson’s character with a 16-year-old kid who’s smart, talented and comes from a wealthy, loving family.

Over the five days Craig spends in the ward, he and Noelle go through their cuckoo’s-nest courtship. Instead of sympathizing with these characters, audiences will envy their lack of responsibility heck, they spend all their time playing ping-pong and basketball, doing arts and crafts, learning how to create music together, chasing each other down the hallways and having all their meals cooked for them. He has a morose roommate named Muqtada (Bernard White), and a chorus of would-be mentors, the most important of whom is Bobby, a soulful, scatterbrained schlemiel played, it is almost redundant to say, by Zach Galifianakis . Mr. Galifianakis’s Gleasonesque movements and deadpan, behind-the-beat timing serve him well in this role, as does his ability to seem completely in earnest even when his actions and utterances are bizarre or nonsensical.