Product Details

• Actors: Winona Ryder, Angelina Jolie, Clea DuVall, Brittany Murphy, Elisabeth Moss
• Directors: James Mangold
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Sony Pictures
• VHS Release Date: January 1, 2000
• Run Time: 127 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (289 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 0767819586
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #886 in Video (See Bestsellers in Video)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Based on Susanna Kaysen's acclaimed journal-memoir, Girl, Interrupted bears inevitable resemblance to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and pale comparison to that earlier classic is impossible to avoid. The mental institution settings of both films guarantee a certain degree of déjà vu and at least one Oscar winner (in this case, Angelina Jolie), since playing a loony is any actor's dream gig. Unfortunately, director James Mangold seems to have misplaced the depth and delicacy of his underrated debut, Heavy, despite a great deal of earnest effort by everyone involved. It's easy to see why Winona Ryder chose to star in (and executive-produce) this nearly worthy adaptation of Kaysen's book, since it's a strong vehicle for female casting and potent drama. Mangold certainly got the former; whether he succeeded with the latter is not so clear.

To be sure, Ryder conveys the confusion and chaos that signified Kaysen's life during nearly 18 months of voluntary institutionalization beginning in 1967. But the film seems too eager to embrace the cliché that the "crazies" of the Claymoore women's ward are saner than the war-torn world outside, and lack of narrative focus gives way to semipredictable character study. Susanna (Ryder) is labeled with "borderline personality disorder," a diagnosis as ambiguous as her own emotions, and while Jolie chews the scenery as the resident bad-girl sociopath, Ryder effectively conveys an odyssey from vulnerable fear to self-awareness and, finally, to healing. The ensemble cast is uniformly superb, making this drama well worthwhile, even as it treads familiar territory. If it ultimately lacks dramatic impact, Girl, Interrupted makes it painfully clear that the boundaries of dysfunction are hazy in a world where everyone's crazy once in a while. --Jeff Shannon

From The New Yorker

It's 1967 and a depressed and "promiscuous" upper-middle-class Boston girl seems to have just two choices: the Seven Sisters or the psychiatric ward. Susanna Kaysen's memoir of the time she spent "resting" in the élite McLean Psychiatric Hospital (Sylvia Plath was an alumna) has been adapted by James Mangold, with Winona Ryder, using her doe eyes and rheumy voice to good effect, as Kaysen. However, Angelina Jolie, the ward's truth-telling sociopath, provides the main spark and delivers the film's sharpest lines. Sanity arrives in the form of rock and roll, the talking cure, and Whoopi Goldberg, who plays a worldly-wise nurse. With his mental-ward setting, Mangold wants to provide a fresh perspective on the sixties, but he ends up merely institutionalizing them. -Michael Agger
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stunning portrayal of several characters & well-earned Oscar, April 26, 2002

By	Jayne Ravencroft (Matthews, NC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Girl, Interrupted (DVD)

Winona Ryder is back from several years of lull in any highly memorable roles in major movies, and she is right on form with possibly her best performance yet. But that is certainly not all this movie has to offer. She plays Susannah Kaysen, an inpatient for a year at a mental hospital, who wrote the book about her real life story on which this is based. Not only Susannah but several of the other inpatients are most memorable characters. Angelina Jolie won Best Supporting Actress for playing Lisa, a sometimes menacing and always interesting patient there because of her anti-social personality. Other quite meomrable characters include a pathological liar who is Susannah's usually sweet roommate, played by Clea DuVall, and the Sullen and obsessed Daisy, who will eat nothing but chicken from her father's rotisserie, played by Brittany Murphy. Through her own struggles and interactions with the others, Susannah confronts in a memorable way some of the hot issues of the late 1960's, making this almost a nostalgia trip as well as a riveting human drama.

32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars As Amusing as it is poignant, July 25, 2002

By	Kirsten Abercrombie (North Carolina) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Girl, Interrupted (DVD)

Here's a look inside a mental hospital that will amply entertain while it communicates a heart-rending angst just as compellingly. Winona Ryder plays Susanna Kaysen, an inpatient in a true-life story who told her experiences in the institution in a book of the same title. Her own story is poignant but ever rivaled by that of other fellow patients. One is Georgina, Susannah's sort-of happy-go-quirky roommate. Then there's Daisy, a sad and somber patient whose story will break your heart. And there's long-time resident Polly, sweet and loveable but still a prisoner to her childhood trauma in which she set herself on fire. But stealing the show is Lisa, played by Angelina Jolie, possibly the most spellbinding of less-than-heroic movie characters since Hannibal Lecter. It is impossible not to relate to Lisa and even sympathize with her somewhat, even though she is menacing and can be cruel. She traumatizes other patients, for example taunting poor Polly and calling her "torch". Lisa is the escape artist of the group and bonds with Susannah in surprising ways. There's indeed some heavy stuff here. But it's also highly watchable with humanity and sometimes humor shining through the tragedy.

35 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Comedy Drama, August 13, 2002

By	Kristy Marie (tampa, fl United States) - See all my reviews

Very nice movie about a girl who is 17 and in rehab there she meets totally crazy skitzo Lisa and they form a friendship.. very sad at points and very funny at points a must see!