Winona Ryder was never on my list of actresses I love to watch (probably because she was in "Reality Bites," one of my most hated movies of all-time), but in "Girl, Interrupted," I liked her a lot. Her performance was perfect. Her facial expressions, the way she said her dialogue, and the way she said a lot by saying nothing, I liked her a lot in this movie. Also, I never realized just how pretty she is. That Winona is a good-lookin' babe.
Also in "Girl, Interrupted" is the sexy Angelina Jolie. She's a very good actress, and her performance in this movie has impressed lotsa critics. She IS very good, but I didn't like her character at all, even though there are parts where I think the audience is SUPPOSED to sympathize with her. Clea DuVall (she was the slightly gothish chick in "The Faculty") was also really good, as was Elizabeth Moss who plays... actually, I don't wanna say. Her character is very tragic, that's all I'll say.
Whoopi Goldberg, Vanessa Redgrave, and Jeffrey Tambor each play the few sane characters, yet they all seemed to be more complex than the wackos in the sanitarium. I appreciated that the normal characters were treated as more than just paper cutouts, but I sometimes found them to be the most interesting parts of the movie. Unfortunately, they weren't on the screen as much as I'da liked.
The script was written by James Mangold, Lisa Loomer, and Hamilton Phelan, and it's based on the book by Susanna Kaysen about her experience in the a sanitarium (Winona Ryder plays Susanna Kaysen, by the way). I think that the script needed some work, but I intend to read the book. I once read "The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath (a very good, but complicated book), and I'm intrigued by the fact that Kaysen's experience was in the same sanitarium as Plath's, yet they both have completely different tales to tell.
Prior to "Girl, Interrupted," James Mangold wrote and directed "Heavy" (which I've never seen, but will) and "Cop Land" (a movie I liked a lot). Maybe I was looking for something similar to "Cop Land," but "Girl, Interrupted" wasn't as good as I'd hoped. I originally thought that the reason for my disappointment was because James Mangold, who made a great guy movie with "Cop Land," wasn't ready for a chick flick. But from what I know about "Heavy," there are some chickie elements in it, so maybe it's not that.
There are
some really great things in "Girl, Interrupted" (especially the acting),
but for the most part, it's not as good as it should or could be. Still,
it DID make me curious enough to wanna go and buy the book.