I am very disappointed.

Rating: 4/10 (17 January 2000)

Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie, strong actresses getting better. A fantastic memoir by Susanna Kaysen. Put them together for a movie, must be a great idea. Unfortunately, the script writers butchered the book, twisting reality and dropping the symbolism that makes the original book so powerful. Every place the movie strays from the book is a disaster, reducing the powerful issues involved to simplistic explanations and low-IQ analyses of mental illness. What should have been an enthralling and moving tale of mental illness and a woman's struggle to find her identity in a world of turmoil becomes a dull, cliched retelling of people being locked in mental institutions.
I wonder if voters who rate the movie highly have read the book. Also, I wonder if any of them realize how cruelly the movie makers played with their emotions in cheap, simple ways without investing the movie with any significant depth and character. I wish I had waited to rent it.