This film, directed by Ryan Murphy and based on Augusten Burroughs' memoir of the same name, is as cluttered as the house that serves as it's central setting. Brimming with performances that are inspired but cut short, the film adaptation struggles to portray the rich characters and relationships so well fleshed out in the book.

In both book and movie, a teenaged Augusten, played by Joseph Cross, is abandoned by his mentally ill mother (Annette Bening) who leaves him in the chaotic home of her corrupt psychiatrist, Dr. Finch, (played with reliable creepiness by Brian Cox). In the most gut-wrenching scene of a film full of gut wrenchers, Augusten calls his father (Alec Baldwin) to rescue him from this baldly dysfunctional situation. Baldwin, with the brilliant wooden-faced pain that has become his signature, hangs up the phone in silence, and we understand that this boy will not be saved. Left to fend for himself, Augusten quickly befriends the doctor's daughter, Natalie Finch -- played by Evan Rachel Wood -- the only member of the family not under the spell of the good Doctor.

While the movie hints at their closeness, we are not privvy to the loving, yet overly intense and claustrophobic partnership forged by Augusten and Natalie and described in the book. Running with Scissors is one of those books that you find yourself reading compulsively and while engaged in activities that should require your full attention. One of the reasons for its intense readability is the empathy one feels for Augusten. Few of us have had the misfortune that he endures, yet we've all been in that marriage of sorts that is the teenage friendship: smothering, dysfunctional and seemingly inescapable, yet infused with a loyalty and closeness that is not likely to be recaptured in later life. Onscreen, Cross and Wood do what they can to portray their depressing but comforting friendship, but they are given so little time and real attention to do so.

Murphy choses instead to focus much of his film on the steep decline of Augusten's mother, Deirdre Burroughs. Here art imitates life, as Augusten is squeezed out and his mother claims center stage. Bening's crazy is utterly chilling (her dead eyes during episodes of psychotic break stay with you long after you leave the theater) and yet totally sympathetic, you feel sorry for this bright yet screwed-up woman even as she sacrifices her son to the squalor of the Finch home.

Other characters swept aside include Natalie's sister Hope (Gwyneth Paltrow), whose loony loyalty to her father is heartbreaking in the book,. The film tells us she is her father's favorite, but the bewildering, intoxicating character we get to know in the book is here inexplicably cooking up her cat. "She's just another crazy Finch," the movie seems to say. By this point, we are well aware that Augusten's situation is dire, what we're missing is how it all got this way, and why.

Then there is the issue of Augusten's lover, Neal Bookman, a patient of Dr. Finch's who takes advantage of the vulnerable young man and exploits him sexually. In Burroughs' novel, the violence of their first sexual encounter speaks volumes about the relationship, which is a complex one: at once abusive and loving. Despite the fact that Neal is much older than Augusten, the boy's reaction to the abuse is complicated: he loves the attention and affection, yet he is angry that no one will protect him from his predator and he is not prepared, really, to be having a sexual relationship. Joe Fiennes' Bookman is erratic and unstable, and we see how is own unhappiness is thrust upon young Augusten, but like the other actors, Fiennes' is not given the screentime to truly develop his character.

That Bening's Running with Scissors performance will make her a candidate for the Oscars' seems a forgone conclusion at this point, and it makes one wonder what the rest of this excellent cast would have done with a little more room to breath.