Hanging With A Neurotic

Rating: 8/10 (10 April 2008)

"Girl Interrupted," starring Winona Ryder and Golden Globe winner Angelina Jolie, is "The Snake Pit" with snakes.
If you've never seen "The Snake Pit," Olivia de Havilland of "Gone with the Wind" fame played a young housewife that suffered a nervous breakdown and wound up in a notorious mental institution. Nominated for a Best Picture Oscar in 1948, this grim, unrelenting expose chronicled one woman's descent into insanity and her struggle to recover. Until Jack Nicholson came along in 1975 with Milos Foreman's "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest," all insane asylum movies were measured against "The Snake Pit." Of course, there had been other interesting asylum movies, such as two that appeared in 1955: Jose Ferrer's "The Shrike" (1955) and Vincente Minnelli's "The Cobweb." In "Girl Interrupted," Winona Ryder of "Heathers" fame plays a neurotic high school graduate diagnosed with "borderline personality disorder." Meaning, she experiences confusion about her identity, her long-term goals, her friends, and her moral values. After she makes a half-hearted attempt to kill herself by chasing a bottle of aspirin with Vodka, her physician advises that she commit herself. Susan Kaysen's bestselling memoir serves as the factual basis of "Girl Interrupted." Naturally, "Copland" director James Mangold stretches the truth, but he doesn't stretch it so much that you would notice the discrepancy.
This lightweight but absorbing melodrama boasts a terrific ensemble cast with Oscar caliber performances, especially from future "Laura Croft" star Angelina Jolie, but it is a far cry from either "The Snake Pit" or "The Cuckoo's Nest." "Girl Interrupted" dramatizes Kaysen's two year stint at Claymoore, the fictional counterpart to a real life private psychiatric clinic near Boston, Massachusetts. Sure, Susan (Winona Ryder) survives the ordeal and emerges none the worst for wear. Such is not the case for her unfortunate fellow inmates. When our protagonist arrives at Claymoore, Lisa (Angelina Jolie), the prototypical bad girl patient with keen insight into everybody's problems, takes her under wing and shows her the ropes. Predictably, Lisa emerges as a horrid influence. Eventually, Susan realizes that she must quit trying to buck the system and come to grips with reality.
Although it shuns the usual mental ward movie stereotypes, "Girl Interrupted" never lingers long on anything unpleasant; after all, this is a chick flick for teens and twentysomethings. Occasionally, somebody finds herself strapped up in a straitjacket, but frequently they frolic without fear, after the nightly bed checks, raid the patient files to catch up on what the therapists are writing about them, or escape on harmless excursions.
Okay, one girl commits suicide by hanging herself, but the worst thing that happens to Winona's character is that helpful Whoopi Goldberg pushes her into a tub of cold water and reprimands her. Despite all the rules, attendants, and stern but sympathetic nurses, our heroines come and go as they please with moderate supervision. "Girl Interrupted" resembles a cross-between of TV's vintage sitcom "Hogan's Heroes" and "National Lampoon's Animal House" in a sorority setting.
Ultimately, strong performances, a persuasive cast, and a mild sedative of a saga make "Girl Interrupted" worth watching once if not twice.