Keir Gilchrist – Mosher'sUnimaginativelyEntitledBlog

Due to Gill’s eldest starting back at her Friday club, we couldn’t get to the cinema before 9pm. As such, just the one film this week (boo!)

It’s Kind of a Funny Story

Plot-in-a-nutshell: depressed teenager gets himself committed to a mental ward and meets some loons.

If I’d known this film featured Zach Galifianakis, I would likely have avoided it. He’s not bad, just typecast. He’s always the fat, useless, bearded outcast that everyone tolerates and then gets to like at the end of the film. *yawn*

In IKoaFS, he’s a fat, useless, bearded outcast who’s genuinely quirky (without being outrageous and just plain stupid) who has reasons for being where he is, reasons for getting better and who you can actually start to feel empathy for by the time the movie ends. This is what good scriptwriting does for an actor who was never actually all that bad.

Zach plays Bobby, an “inmate” of an adult mental ward who befriends teenager Craig (Keir Gilchrist) when he checks himself in due to feeling suicidal. As the film goes on, Craig’s problems are dealt with as Bobby’s are made more clear – and understandable.

The film focusses on the stresses that we often put our children through in this day and age, as well as the predominantly American solution of shoving them towards a psychiatrist and a bottle of tablets. I suppose it would class as a black comedy given the subject matter. Imagine One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest for the teen generation. Except better. In fairness, I thought what some may argue as Jack Nicholson‘s finest hour was over-rated – but all the same.

There are great performances across the board and very few if any “seen it all before” moments. Simply, it’s well scripted and entertaining. Sure, you kind of know how it’s going to end but the way it’s presented is excellent – plenty of little animated segues and the like.

Given we only saw one film this week, I think we picked a good one.