Rating: 
Summary: Finally
Review: I finally saw this movie. I read the book back in 1997, and have been a Winona Ryder fan since 1990, so one would think I would have run out and seen this movie when it first came out, or at least when it received an oscar. I just saw it last weekend (March 3, 2001). I hadn't seen it because it happened to come out right after I was released from my last hospitalization (mid 1999, 4th in 6 years), and I was still a little touchy about the hospital scene. Also, I was kind of mad. Being such a Winona fan I wanted her to star in my loony bin memoir (that I have yet to write). So I finally saw Girl, Interrupted expecting it to be an unrealistic portrayal. I was actually really surprised. It was very similar to my own experience with hospitals. It didn't bother me and give me nightmares like I thought it would, it wasn't half as bad as what really can go on, but still was realistic. I want someone to make a similar movie set more recently. These days smoking isn't allowed on the wards, and if someone tongues their meds they just give them some in liquid form mixed with juice. You can't exactly tongue that. Also, people don't stay for years these days. The longest I ever stayed was two months and I had been there longer than anyone still there when I left. In those two months I had 9 or 10 different roommates, each one getting released before the next moved in. There isn't time to make as close friends. I can't really explain how it was realistic to someone that hasn't been through it. It wasn't like the book, but that was a good thing since I didn't love the book. I liked it, didn't love it. Loved the movie. I didn't think it was long, but I have more patience than most. I even think some of those cut scenes on the DVD shouldn't have been cut. - like the museum scene that explains the title, and susanna seeing lisa smoking under a bridge while suzanna passed in the taxi on the way to the hospital that first day.
Rating: 
Summary: Deviates from the book
Review: If this movie wasn't claiming to be a true story, I might have given it 4 stars. I read the book, however, and it's obvious that they changed things. Sure, it makes a better movie, but if they're going to claim that it's a true story, they should have stuck with the truth.
Rating: 
Summary: Take back the Oscar
Review: I loved this movie, the only thing I have to say is that I don't believe Angelina Jolie should have received an oscar for playing herself. Oscars should go to actors who stretch their abilities and talents to become something they are not. I've been told Angie is just as nuts in real life so it wasn't a very difficult role to play. And lets face it, aside from Gia, and Girl Interrupted all of her other movies have been crap. So, maybe I'm wrong then-- maybe she gets the oscar for not giving a crappy performance. I'll buy that.
Rating:
Summary: A nice movie to watch
Review: At times somewhat confusing but overall a good movie with some occasional twist to throw you off the track if not too careful.
Rating:
Summary: Girl, don't interrupt me!
Review: I liked this movie becuase it dealt with the tortured, suicidal female persona. However, the movie was kind of hard to understand and I had to watch it two times. Overall, a well-deserved movie that is superb and beyond your average flick.
Rating: 
Summary: Why Did I Interrupt My Life to Watch These Girls?
Review: Going into the movie with no expectations, my expectations were met. That is the best thing I can say for the movie.Although attempts are made to create a tapestry of memorable characters, none are really very interesting, and it is hard to grow attached or sympathetic with any of them. They seem more like stock characters meant to fill gaps more than real people. This includes Ryder, who plays the innocent thrust into this strange little world. She has the predictable catalytic experience one day with Goldberg, who plays the same sort of counseler that she played aboard the Starship Enterprise. Jolie is the most interesting, and does good things with a script that puts her into the bad-girl box. Even her performance cannot save the movie, however. It moves slowly, predictable things happen, and the ending left me without any sort of feeling one way or the other besides a deep desire to reclaim my five dollars and two hours of my life. The impression is that this was to be a female version of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", but it lacks the heart or humor to even be in the same league.
Rating:
Summary: Jolie's Movie
Review: Another amazing performance by the great Angelina Jolie. This becomes her movie more that Ryder's. That's why she swept the awards (Golden Globe, SAG, SHo-west, And Oscar). Everyone's attention is on Jolie. She's believably... crazy! The rest of the cast (Clea Duvall, Brittany Murphy, Elisabeth Moss, Angela Bettis and others) are great too. I don't know why Winona Ryder's part annoys me but it does. Sorry Winona
Rating: 
Summary: i just didn't like the ending
Review: OK, i suppose this is supposed to sound odd, but i didn't like the ending Winona Ryder, playing the main character who also happens to be the author of the book this is based on, gets in a little trouble and goes to an asylum where people are treated not so great. She meets a strong, rebellious character played by Angelina Jolie. Jolie gets Ryder to be a little rebellious In the end, Ryder reforms her evil ways, plays by the asylum's rules, gets released and writes this book. Jolie, refusing to give in to the asylum, pretty much stays there forever and has a horrible life It was a pretty decently done movie, except that i really didn't like any of the characters (Whoopi Goldberg normally plays someone likable and wise, but here she was neither) and i really wished Jolie had won. Personally, if i had been in that instituion, i would have been as rebellious as Jolie. i cheered for persistent rebellion against abused authority, but in the end giving in to authority was shown as the way to go. So while it was an OK movie, i just didn't like the ending, even if it was a true story
Rating:
Summary: Girl Inter- Jolie steals movie from Ryder- upted.
Review: Winona Ryder is far from my favorite actress. I can praise her work in films like Beetle Juice, Lucas and Edward Scissorhands, but I must utterly dismiss her for lackluster performances in films like Age of Innocence and Aliens 4. In Girl Interrupted Ryder is quite good, but the film is a mixed bag that is dominated by an almost over-the-top, though affecting performance by Angelie Jolie (as Lisa). Her performance is the type of take no prisoners work which sometimes is richly rewarded by the Oscar folks (and of course, was). It's also the reason to keep watching this film which offers nothing particularly new, but might connect and offer some solace to those who have ever felt alienated by not playing by someone else's idea of the rules. The film features folks in supporting roles like Whoopie Goldberg and Vanessa Redgrave who aren't given much to do and therefore act like they are picking up a check for a t.v. movie of the week. I don't fault them so much for that, because much of Girl Interrupted feels very much like a t.v. movie of the week or an Afterschool Special. It plays sometimes like a softer, gentler, One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. What I really fault the film for is in it's numerous continuity errors. I mean glaringly obvious ones that make me wonder if anyone other than Ryder cared as deeply for this project as we've been led to believe. Supposedly (and I've no reason to disbelieve it) Ryder worked for nearly 7 years to hold onto this project and see that it was brought it to the screen with the care and reverence she felt it deserved. To insure this, she became one of the producers of the project and probably partially financed the rights to the book and most likely sacrificed her normal star salary. The book is written as a string of vignettes, and author Susanna Kayson has a prose voice for capturing small personal details. The vignettes and thoughts add up to make a very affecting book, but the book doesn't have a strong narrative. To make a film of the book a more conventional narrative was needed. This narrative could have sharply skewered psychiatry, or become a feminist One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, creating some evil psychiatrist or Nurse Ratchet character. To it's credit the film doesn't do this. It stays truer to the source material than that. When some rich parents can't communicate with their children, they sometimes let psychiatric hospitals do their work for them. And that's essentially the story that is told here. The hospital is not a Snake Pit kind of place. But it is a cold, and sometimes heartless institution. The movie makes the point that one of the main reasons Kaysen was committed to McLean was her possible promiscuity, and her depression which ended with a half hearted suicide attempt involving aspirin and vodka. Men have rarely been considered mentally disturbed for their promiscuity . The film also to its credit doesn't romanticize insanity either. We meet characters who are troubled without thinking they are very 'cool' or destined to be artistic outcasts. Yet we don't have anyone who warrants our sympathy in terms of a central character. After all, Kaysen admitted herself to the institution, and its clear she was smart enough to pretty quickly play the game well enough to get herself released if she decided it was better dealing with the turbulent 1960's on the outside, then the cold instutionalism of a high class mental institution. And Ryder's performances is quiet and even. She let's Jolie as Lisa and some of the other characters over-emote around her. That's to her credit on the one hand, but it doesn't help us as audience members to care all that much about her. As the central figure of film, rather than as the narrator of the book, Kaysen is who we are most focused on. And she is the least troubled of nearly anyone we meet. We know she's in pretty good shape and in fact becomes a surrogate big sister to some of the other in-mates in the institution. So where's the suspenseful conflict? We know there isn't a really big problem, and we know she isn't in any great danger. Some of the other characters clearly have some major issues, but we don't get to know or care very much about them. And then there are the continuity errors to really bother those who are paying attention. There are a couple of scenes where you'll see Ryder as Kaysen lighting a cigarette and smoking and then a few moments later, lighting another cigarette. She's rarely without a cigarette but to show her constantly lighting up cigarettes is pretty ridiculous, particularly since in one case she's in the back of a cab, and if she were rapidly chain-smoking, the cab would be thick with smoke, which it isn't. Another one that really bothered me, was later in the film, (and so as not spoil anything I won't go into great details about what else is going in), we learn Angelina Jolie as the sociopath Lisa really despises cats. A cat that follows Ryder out for a walk, but when she returns, the cat is inside the apartment where Lisa (Jolie) is. Lisa wouldn't have let the cat back in-she hates cats.. it's a mistake and mistakes happen but this film is full of continuity errors, which shows a real sloppiness on the director, and editors part. I couldn't help but think of times of Jack Arnold's cult campy classic Switchblade Sisters when Angeline Jolie as Lisa was on screen. She's chewing the scenery in a barely disguised variation on a bad girl from reform school type of performaance which would have been right at home in a 50's juvie film or a 70's woman in prison film. And I couldn't help thinking that although parts of Girl Interrupted are well done, and well acted,I would have much rather been watching One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest or even Switchblade Sisters, then this film. Chris Jarmick Author of The Glass Cocoon with Serena F. Holder - A steamy cyber thriller available January 2001. Please order it today. Thank You
Rating:
Summary: Not very close to the memoirs.
Review: If I was just reviewing the movie - I would give it 11 stars! But I have read Kaysen's memoir many times and was dissapointed at how far the story line strayed and the inaccuracies between the film and her memoir. However the performances were flawless! The first time I saw the film (opening night in the theatre) I was really irritated seeing how far the movie's story line strayed from the memoirs. I was expecting something more exact with all the fanfare Winonna Ryder gave in her interviews as a producer, she was very concerned with protecting the integrity of the memoirs. Which was a large draw for me to go see the film. The film didn't turn Kaysen's memoirs into fluff or take the intensity out of it, but you do loose a lot with this rendition. Just for a beginning, in Kaysen's memoirs, she had taken the bottle of asprin over a year before she was committed to the hospital. Which really was important to the story, the doctor had just put her in for a "rest" feeling her to be depressed. Which was very critical to the "story" as Susanna really did not understand why she was in there and many people would argue did not need need to be hospitalized (at that time). And the incident with biting her hand to try to see if she had bones, that had happened after they found out Daisy was dead. Whose house they had of course never been to. And Lisa was NEVER allowed off grounds to the ice cream parlour!! The list goes on and on and on.... And I found this to be upsetting because her memoir wasn't fiction, there were no "characters" in it and to lose such vital information was really a shame. I understand that all of this was needed for character development and to keep the movie from turning into a mini series. (Which actualyl I would not have minded). And it did make a GREAT movie. But, if you are looking to buy this film, or rent it hoping it is a closer rendition of Kaysen's memoirs (as I did) you will be very dissapointed. The first time I saw it, I was almost fixated on finding the flaws and the differences between it and Kaysen's book. The second time, I watched it just to see it as a movie and it was fabulous. I will certainly watch it a third time, as I will read Kaysen's memoir periodically throughout my life.
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