Too much complaining, not enough movie.

Not all true stories should be made into movies. Just because it really happened doesn't make it interesting. And this movie is a big, bland poster of a true story that either wasn't interesting enough to be a movie or wasn't arranged interesting enough to keep me from dozing off in my chair. The book has to be better because it can't be much worse.

Prozac Nation seems to be just about one hour and thirty-five minutes of Christina Ricci's non-stop bitching. And me watching the screen dully, trying hard to pay attention, and losing track half-way of what it is she's upset about this time, and wondering how it is I haven't yet gotten up and found something better to do with my time.

This movie started out fine. It's something we can all relate to. A girl who's growing into adulthood, leaving home to start her new life in college while dealing (or not dealing) with her troubled childhood and just plain trying to figure it all out. She's trying to be a writer and she's very good at being a writer, but she has trouble getting anywhere in school with her writing because all this trying to figure things out just gets in the way. This sort of thing happens to all of us, in different ways. You empathize. You even understand when she turns to drugs and sex and all of that fun stuff that goes on about in college for people going through the exact same problems. Maybe you even understand her bouts of 'depression' and the path she leads down because of it.

But you get the point after a good 30 minutes. The movie could have ended there and we would have been able to nod and sigh about life's struggles and then move on with our own. It still wouldn't have made it interesting or a good movie, but at least we could have done ANYTHING ELSE more constructive for the rest of the time this movie droned on and on.

Christina Ricci's character just keeps getting worse. She fights with her parents, she lets down her friends, she has a relationship that ends because she's exhausting. She yells, she screams, she throws things. She sees a psychiatrist, she tries to work it all out. She whines for another half hour. Exhausting is right. This movie makes you want to go out and get your own Prozac just to get the hell away from her and the cold room that is this movie.

The characters are asleep, if not dead. There's no life. There's no warmth, from any of them. They're just wandering around without real point. Maybe to create the illusion that this is a movie and not just wasted time listening to Christina Ricci talk. If the characters don't care, why should we care? The plot is a mess, there's very little twist. It's just factual, if nothing else. It's like one of those movies you watched when you were in school, telling you what you already knew. You've heard it all before. Maybe you've even seen it first-hand. Reading it as a book might prove more interesting but actually watching it is much like nails on a chalkboard. Jonathan Rhys Myers and Jason Biggs were slight high points of this movie but their 15 minutes in the movie wasn't enough to keep me from almost falling asleep during Ricci's mind-numbing hour and a half of fit throwing. I understand where this movie was going and the book was probably far better, but it just didn't hold much of a point put to actors on film. This movie is a car going slow on very little gas. At the end it just runs out. That's it. The end. What was the point, exactly?

There just isn't much to take away from this movie that you hadn't already brought with you. Exhausting, cold, dead on arrival. Watch if you like but don't be surprised to wake up after it's over with no memory of anything about the movie and drool running down the side of your mouth. Look for the book.