Memoirs are troubled waters for anyone attempting to make a movie out of them because it serves as a form of expurgating some inner torment that no one really wants to see played out. At least it catapults the writer in question into instant stardom as it did Elizabeth Wurtzel, who came up with her ode to the God of Prozac even though he makes his appearance near the end of this convoluted mess of a movie.
Wurtzel's story tries to depict an honest account of what she went through for years and years before her condition -- chronic depression -- became a household name. Alienated from her father, living in hell with her mother (Jessica Lange who screams at every chance, then with a daughter like Elizabeth who wouldn't?), befriending a college roommate, Ruby (Michelle Williams) and then stealing Ruby's boyfriend while going into schizophrenic lapses of personality shifts, this is a tour-de-force of acting for Christina Ricci who plays Wurtzel like walking poison. It's hard not to hate the things that Wurtzel does in the movie -- they are many, which include ridiculing a potential boyfriend's disabled sister and then telling her boyfriend he gets off on his sister's disability in a monstrous scene -- but then again, Ricci is quite an actress. It takes a lot of mettle to be able to play such a horrible person who at times, seems to be really having a mental breakdown, but for the most just seems to be outrageously self-involved, narcissistic, and sociopathic with a little dash of a uber drama queen on steroids thrown in for grabs.
PROZAC NATION, at least with Ricci and Williams, holds its head up. Where is sinks, is in the direction in itself, which is just off -- having Ricci being photographed in techniques attempting to depict mental instability not seen since the 1970s is just lame. Jessica Lange and Nicholas Campbell look nothing like Ricci and Lange especially is in her own movie -- FRANCES, part two perhaps? PROZAC NATION does nothing to resolve its predicament, but then again, I'd assume that Wurtzel's own book wouldn't be a walk in the park. Or maybe it's just an excuse to excuse truly bizarre, selfish behavior. You do the math, see if this adds up.
Wurtzel's story tries to depict an honest account of what she went through for years and years before her condition -- chronic depression -- became a household name. Alienated from her father, living in hell with her mother (Jessica Lange who screams at every chance, then with a daughter like Elizabeth who wouldn't?), befriending a college roommate, Ruby (Michelle Williams) and then stealing Ruby's boyfriend while going into schizophrenic lapses of personality shifts, this is a tour-de-force of acting for Christina Ricci who plays Wurtzel like walking poison. It's hard not to hate the things that Wurtzel does in the movie -- they are many, which include ridiculing a potential boyfriend's disabled sister and then telling her boyfriend he gets off on his sister's disability in a monstrous scene -- but then again, Ricci is quite an actress. It takes a lot of mettle to be able to play such a horrible person who at times, seems to be really having a mental breakdown, but for the most just seems to be outrageously self-involved, narcissistic, and sociopathic with a little dash of a uber drama queen on steroids thrown in for grabs.
PROZAC NATION, at least with Ricci and Williams, holds its head up. Where is sinks, is in the direction in itself, which is just off -- having Ricci being photographed in techniques attempting to depict mental instability not seen since the 1970s is just lame. Jessica Lange and Nicholas Campbell look nothing like Ricci and Lange especially is in her own movie -- FRANCES, part two perhaps? PROZAC NATION does nothing to resolve its predicament, but then again, I'd assume that Wurtzel's own book wouldn't be a walk in the park. Or maybe it's just an excuse to excuse truly bizarre, selfish behavior. You do the math, see if this adds up.