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Review

Elizabeth Wurtzel’s self-absorbed memoir of her university days became a best selling pill opera icon worthy to sit on shelves next to "Valley of the Dolls," and though its social message is warped (would Wurtzel have us return to the tranquilizer-happy 1960s?), it did us a service by calling attention to clinical depression as a recognized and treatable condition. The film’s ending title card citing the stats of U.S. Prozac use is confusing – are they trying to tell us it’s a bad thing that there’s so much depression, a good thing that patients are getting help? That depression is an epidemic in America? That it’s a symptom of a generation? What? The movie adaptation sidesteps almost all dry medical discussions to concentrate on the juice of the story: shrieking barnstorming melodrama in the Joan Crawford tradition! While the capable Christina Ricci grinds through the psychodrama as drama queen Wurtzel (with Jessica Lange fretting and chain smoking as her neurotic mom), the Scandinavian filmmakers take in the tantrums with cool impunity, offering only a few music video effects to jazz things up.

 -- Brian Thomas