It’s a Funny Kind of Story Review

Johnny Awesome’s Review

The trendiest teen dramedy Delano and I attended most recently, “It’s Kind of a Funny Story,” is well-trodden territory. At the advice of a suicide hotline depressed teen, Craig (Keir Gilchrist) checks himself into a psychiatric ward in New York City where he befriends fellow psychiatric patient Bobby (Zach Galifianakis) who teaches him important life lessons, and so on.  Although this is typical of various other movies about teen depression/chaos of life, this movie sticks out in my mind because of its near-perfect balance of comical and dark approaches to the subject. The mood and outlook of Craig improves steadily throughout the plot, but does so without feeling like a motivational self-help video. Instead, the movie feels truly identifiable among angst-ridden teens.

Zach Galifianakis delivers a plausible performance for a grown man in the psychiatric ward of a hospital. The mannerisms he adds to his character make his depression believable, real, and stark while maintaining a sense of comfort. He convinces the audience of his stability until a critical scene following a botched an interview for entrance into a group home. In this scene Bobby’s despair and subsequent loss of control are terrifying and unnerving as the audience observes the stability of a grown man crumble as he lashes out at any inanimate object within grasp.  This role for Galifianakis shows he’s an actor that deserves to be taken seriously.

Original music by Broken Social Scene, a popular band that has maintained its integrity over many years, was a good move.  Name-dropping Vampire Weekend appeals to the target audience, even if it felt a little bit cheap to those outside that demographic.

“It’s Kind of a Funny Story” is solid movie. I’ll go ahead and rate it 4 F**king Awesomes, indicated with a picture of Jim Gaffigan who cameos as Craig’s father (even though he deflates our expectations by being un-humorous in this movie and must have just needed a couple bucks) (His wife is played by Lauren Graham of Gilmore Girls, whom I’ll love forever).

P.S. If Delano says I cried it’s not something I admit to, though it is a touching movie at parts…

Delano Awful’s Review

It’s kind of a funny story about why I don’t like “It’s Kind of a Funny Story.”  It’s not the performances that irritated me. The performances were pretty solid even though I could have murdered Kiel Gilchrest for portraying the typical awkward teen with a flat personality and bearing the burden of affluent white teenagers in upscale Manhattan.  The comedy forces of Galifianakis and Gaffigan betrayed the expectations of hilarity by being somewhat serious, which is kind of how I feel about Bill Murray lately.  All the other performances were fine.  The story, okay, but it kind of felt ripped off from a memoir I recently read: Quitting the Nairobi Trio by Jim Knipfel.

It’s not the story that bugged me.  For a second I considered how clever the writers were to start from the bottom and work up.  In this case, Craig, starts from suicide, kind of like Patch Adams, or some other sappy bullshit.  But from down on the bottom, you can write about the sappiest things and it’s always an improvement.  The plot was kind of like the opposite of the classic Freytag pyramid.

I wasn’t even irritated with the usage of a third-person singular neuter pronoun at the beginning of the title, which anyone who has taken a writing 5030 class (and who hasn’t?_ knows you absolutely do not do.

I hated this movie because it made my Johnny Awesome cry.  Sobbing like a baby in the dark, slouched in his seat while he was “identifying” with the characters and shit, taking noticeable inhalations through his stuffed nose, pissing me off.  How can I concentrate while I have sour-puss blubbering right next to me the whole time.  I think he got some of his tears on my sleeve, and thus I had to burn that shirt because I hate the smell of tears, and for some reason, Johnny’s tears smell particularly bad.  Sure, he’ll act tough and deny any accusations, but I’m certain there is still a salty puddle on the floor of theater 4 at the Broadway Theater on 300 S and 200 E.  For this reason alone, I am giving this film 3 fucking sucks, as represented by the image of a really sad-looking Conor Oberst.