An ALMOST great movie with a HUGE psychological flaw of reality

Rating: 6/10 (3 October 1999)

All of the actors were great in their roles, the photography was beautiful, the pace just right. It's a good movie, it could have been far better. What bothered me was the characterization of Ricky Fits: his character and condition is the fulcrum around which everything else pivots.
The actor did a marvelous job of portraying him as written.
But to me (a clinical psychologist who's worked with adolescents, pot smokers, personality disorders, & schizophrenics, &c.), the character as written was just unbelievable. It was as if the writer(s) of the screen play went through the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual (the guide delineating symptom clusters and their official diagnoses), clipped out various symptoms from various diagnostic categories, and then pasted a collage together.
The screen play characterization of Ricky puts together TOO many qualities that are typically incompatible. WHEN would you EVER see: continuing pot smoking from a young age with very successful adolescent entrepreneurship?; being a long established & practiced voyeur with a sudden capacity for somewhat warm relating?; severity of mental disorder/weirdness of perception with non-distorted perceptions of people and warm relating?; etc., etc. These writers either have to have been from another planet, smoking something illegal, or grossly unaware of mental illnesses.
All other psychological dynamics portrayed were acceptable or believable enough (given that this is a movie and its story must be told within a certain frame and limits).
But the character of Ricky Fits doesn't fit at all and giving him THAT last name ("Fits") doesn't make a sufficient bridge to reality: there are plenty of people with mental conditions--these deserve compassion, and they have an almost infinite variety of symptoms--but one like Ricky Fits NEVER, EVER exists.