Personal memoirs about turbulent childhoods have been en vogue of late, and when Augusten Burroughs's novel "Running with Scissors" was released in 2003 it blew the competition out of the water. Both outrageously funny and incredibly heartbreaking, the book vividly captures the experiences of Burroughs's tumultuous youth as he navigates between an alcoholic father and a mentally unstable mother, finally ending up in the custody of a bizarre doctor named Finch. As faithful as the film is, it retains little of the nuance that made the book so engaging.

The story begins in the early '70s when Augusten (Joseph Cross, "Flags of Our Fathers") is just a little boy trapped in a war between his feuding parents. After they divorce, he's left in the custody of his mother, Deirdre (Annette Bening, "Being Julia"), a manic depressive and aspiring poet.

Deirdre is consumed by her desire for fame (something she shares with her son), and as she slowly drifts toward mental derangement she grows further apart from Augusten. On top of this, Augusten's fed-up father, Norman (Alec Baldwin, "The Aviator"), won't return his phone calls. Augusten is sent to live with Dr. Finch (Brian Cox, "Match Point"), Deirdre's psychiatrist, who ultimately ends up adopting him, much to Augusten's horror.

At Finch's house, Augusten is introduced to a family that renders "dysfunctional" an understatement. There's Agnes (Jill Clayburgh, TV's "Nip/Tuck"), the dog-food-eating matriarch Hope (Gwyneth Paltrow, "Proof"), the elder daughter who made a stew out of her dead cat after it called to her from the grave and finally Nathalie (Evan Rachel Wood, "Down in the Valley"), the youngest daughter, who wants to use electroshock therapy on Augusten for kicks. The most bizarre member of the family, however, is Dr. Finch himself, who arbitrarily prescribes pills and looks to his bowel movements for divine messages. With all of the antics going on in the Finch household, it's amazing that Augusten actually survived his childhood at all.

The movie is helped along by a uniformly strong cast, with the unfortunate exception of the lead. While Bening and Joseph Fiennes ("The Great Raid"), who plays Augusten's middle-aged boyfriend, turn in especially good performances, Cross never seems to find his character and ends up overshadowed by his more experienced cast members.

Augusten simply lacks characterization. While it's clear that he is very different from other children his age (he wears suits with clip-on ties and obsessively polishes his allowance coins), the film never explores the reason for his eccentricities or their implications. The novel certainly has more space to explore each characters' background, but the adaptation underrepresents the novel to the point of fault.

Without the anchor of a strong main character, "Running With Scissors" can't balance its comedy and pathos, the two elements that made the book so compelling. The movie instead focuses on the comedic side of Augusten's life, leaving the tugging of the heartstrings to the 11th hour.

This new ending, like the movie as a whole, ultimately comes up short.

Star Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Running with Scissors
At the Showcase and Quality 16
Sony