The "Cuckoo's Nest" for the MTV Generation

Rating: Null/10 (4 August 2001)

"Girl, Interrupted" is a suspect film that over-achieves due to dynamite performances and formulaic processes that have worked in Hollywood for decades. The film is based on author Susanna Kaysen's (Winona Ryder) 18-month stay in a mental asylum in the 1960s. Writer-director James Mangold goes for something like Milos Forman's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and somewhat succeeds. Instead of men though, the film focuses on women of an asylum. Oscar-winner Angelina Jolie carries the film much like Jack Nicholson did in the aforementioned film. She is an energizer bunny of enthusiasm that the film had to have. Winona Ryder does good work, as she usually does. Whoopi Goldberg and Vanessa Redgrave also do well in limited time. Overall the film is good, but nothing truly special. It lacks the heart and intelligence that made "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" so great in the mid-1970s. 4 stars out of 5.