Benny & Joon

Writers Barry Berman and Leslie McNeil and director Jeremiah Chechik tell the story with tenderness and humor. And - miracle of miracles, in this day of endless endings - when the story is over, the movie is over, too. [16 Apr 1993, p.3G]

Benny and Joon is a film that approaches its subjects so gingerly it almost seems afraid to touch them. The story wants to be about love, but is also about madness, and somehow it weaves the two together with a charm that would probably not be quite so easy in real life. Read full review

Benny & Joon turns out to be a whimsical (and not very well paced) heart tugger in which two nice couples spend 98 ever-so-slightly flaky minutes figuring out that they’re perfect for each other. Read full review

The way the story is structured, Johnny Depp's performance should have been the movie's centerpiece. But though Depp has a moonbeam quality that's right for Sam, he's not really enough of a clown to make his slapstick scenes come alive. [20 Apr 1993, p.E1]

Some viewers will decide that Benny & Joon strays too far from the brink; they will find its sentimentality cloying. Other viewers will applaud the classic silent film humour and will emerge with a glow they'll want to show off to their friends. Both camps can agree, however, that Mary Stuart Masterson, Aidan Quinn and Johnny Depp are quite good. [16 Apr 1993]

Benny and Joon is a dangerously fanciful story of cute eccentrics, characters whose quirks are the very essence of their appeal. Some of us experience a form of red alert at the very notion of adorable oddballs on screen, but Benny and Joon turns out to be remarkably benign in that regard. Read full review

Movies that make mental illness cute and poetic tend to give me the heebie-jeebies, and this one doesn't help its case by being evasively vague about the nature of Joon's condition. That said, it should be granted that Benny & Joon is one of the more palatable and inventive examples of this suspect genre, its inherent sappiness leavened by screenwriter Barry Berman's wit and director Jeremiah Chechik's clever use of familiar silent-comedy routines. [26 Apr 1993, p.64]

Although it too often succumbs to the kind of whimsical sentimentality about the mentally ill that has afflicted movies from King of Hearts to The Fisher King, this filmed-in-Spokane comedy-drama is almost salvaged by its excellent cast. [16 Apr 1993, p.3]

This sentimental stew is not without its flavors, and the cast tries hard to be winsome and adorably distraught. Read full review

Another one flies over the cuckoo's nest in this soft-hearted romantic three-hander. It's acted out in the secondary emotional register of the glass menagerie: whimsical, delicate, idiosyncratic, barmy. Read full review

It would be easy to slam this flimsy romantic charmer for its cloying whimsicality, but at the core of its misfits-need-love-too storyline lies a warmhearted charm so captivating that only the most hardened cynic will fail to be enchanted. Read full review

Johnny Depp and Mary Stuart Masterson render such startling performances in the romantic fable Benny & Joon that they almost overcome the trappings of an emotional tale that is not particularly well written or directed. Read full review

Romantics of any age will probably succumb to Depp's deft portrayal, cinematographer John Schwartzman's fantastic vision and Berman's comic wordplay. [23 Apr 1993, p.5]

A gentle comedy about two misfits--a schizophrenic girl and a boy whom earlier generations would have called an odd duck--who find love, Benny & Joon means well but overdoses on whimsy. Read full review

Naïf meets waif in this touching yet unrealistic tale of love amongst society's write-offs. Between Masterson's schizophrenic Joon Pearl and Depp's oddball Sam, it's difficult to tell which one's the naïf and which is the waif. Read full review

Chechik has crafted Benny & Joon not as a seamless whole but as a tumble of scenes. Unfortunately, too many of them are inspired by Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd or Buster Keaton, and they seem to spill from the screen like Bozos from a kiddie car. Read full review

Playing a mentally unhinged, almost wordless naif who finds true love with equally nutty Mary Stuart Masterson, he's supposed to invoke the silent comedian, with a little Chaplin thrown in. But he's just Edward Scissorhands without the scissors -- or the edge. Read full review

Every now and then, Benny & Joon makes you think it's going to finally take off, but it never does. It looks good but has credibility problems even on the level of whimsical fairy tale. [16 Apr 1993, p.86]

Inside Benny and Joon, a love story that celebrates dysfunction and the cutes, though not necessarily in that order, there's a character drama whispering to be let out, but that's no help. Long before you get around to liking this little movie, you'll hate it. And that's always a problem. [16 Apr 1993, p.G5]

Ultimately, Chechik can't pull off the fractured-fairy-tale aspect of Benny and Joon. His film never explains mental illness, but romanticizes it, making it seem like a state of enchantment. It's ultimately irresponsible, and not very funny. [16 Apr 1993, p.C1]

Whatever qualms you might have about romanticizing mental illness, the misguided Benny and Joon thinks it's just darling. Read full review