Generally speaking, bad movies can be divided into two categories: movies that are too flawed to be called successes and movies that are too torturous to be called anything but failures. Dividing its runtime between the awkwardly uncomfortable and the tediously boring, Running with Scissors undeniably fits into the latter. The central problem with the film is that nothing about the script can succeed on its own -- it's built exclusively on painful and delicate subject matter. You're going to need irony, humor, and patience if you're going to make a movie about a 13-year-old boy who's abandoned by his narcissistic drugged-out mother and detached alcoholic father, only to become sexually involved with a 35-year-old schizophrenic man shortly after he's left in the care of an IRS-ducking, scatologically obsessed psychiatrist whose equally insane family inhabits a decrepitly unkempt mansion.
Oddly enough, while the bizarre story certainly lives up to author and main character Augusten Burroughs' (Joseph Cross) assertion in the opening narration that nobody will believe it, director Ryan Murphy himself seems to have identified with it too closely. With material that requires surgical precision, Murphy opts instead to stab wildly both at quirky humor and evocative intimacy, and he misses nearly every time. Despite a few well-maneuvered sequences, he presents the horrendous and damaging events of the hero's life with uncomfortably close proximity, like a drawn-out personal anecdote that's destined to end with "I guess you had to be there." The lack of distance makes it impossible to laugh and the surplus of grotesquery makes it impossible to relate, leaving the viewer alienated and unmoved for nearly all of the film.
This isn't entirely Murphy's fault; the script appears to suffer from a malady typical of literary adaptations in that there are too many characters crammed into the two-hour time span for anyone besides the protagonist to possibly be fleshed out. This is a fatal flaw in a movie where literally everyone else is crazy and even Augusten's confidante Natalie (Evan Rachel Wood) shares strangely little screen time after she reveals why she's messed up too.
This problem couldn't be solved by even the most impressive portrayal by a lead actor, and Cross hardly delivers that. However, despite a sometimes blank and meandering performance, he does a respectable job. In fact, none of the actors do particularly bad work here -- they're just stymied by the circumstances of the film. There are some age issues with the casting, namely that while they're both age 20, Wood makes a realistic 14-year-old but Cross does not; and even after being described as an "old maid," 35-year-old Gwyneth Paltrow doesn't seem believable as Wood's sister. But these quibbles aren't really damning; the problem is that the production offers no insight into who any of these deeply damaged and unhinged people are or how they got to be so nuts. All this -- coupled with an irritatingly hackneyed attempt at Wes Anderson-style over-the-top art direction -- leaves nothing to relate to or even look at, taking Running with Scissors out of the running for even the most superficial cinematic enjoyment.