Girl, Interrupted

Columbia Pictures | Release Date: December 21, 1999

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

51	METASCORE Mixed or average reviews based on 32 Critic Reviews

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Critic Reviews

Critic score Publication By date

Owen Gleiberman

Shrewd, tough, and lively -- a junior-league "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Read full review

TNT RoughCutSarah Raskin

Despite uneven pacing -- Girl, Interrupted deftly collapses then and now to create a very personal film filled with heart-tugs and surprisingly funny moments.

Carrie Rickey

The performances in Girl, Interrupted resonate, but the movie does not.

Wesley Morris

In Winona Ryder's case, Girl Interrupted is a showcase in which her brittle, angry portrait shows she has graduated from ingenue to actress.

Lawrence Toppman

They have turned a brief, appealing, honest autobiography by Susanna Kaysen into a long, appealing, rather dishonest film. Read full review

Phoebe Flowers

A rare movie, one that manages to be both quiet and electrifying, touching and unnerving. But it is not a great movie, even though its stars deserve for it to be.

Shawn Levy

Fabulously acted throughout.

Kenneth Turan

Top performances keep true-life mental ward tale Girl, Interrupted soaring, despite a script that frequently drifts into genre clichés. Read full review

Marc Savlov

Jolie's explosive performance surpasses all expectations and renders the film a veritable must-see. Read full review

Paula Nechak

For all its somber heaviness and reverential gravity, it never quite pulls all the elements and themes together. Read full review

Jay Carr

There's too much control in it and not enough danger. Read full review

Roger Ebert

The story, having failed to provide itself with character conflicts that can be resolved with drama, turns to melodrama instead. Read full review

Jonathan Foreman

It's an odd mixture of an unsentimental, darkly humorous take on mental illness with the usual Hollywood loony-bin cliches.

Michael Wilmington

The movie -- even though it's based on real events -- seems unsatisfying and unconvincing.

TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh

There's very little plot, and director Mangold's attempts to make a connection between the social confusion of the '60s and Susanna's inner turmoil don't really work. Read full review

Emanuel Levy

A solid central performance by Winona Ryder and a captivating wild turn by Angelina Jolie in the yarn's flashiest role. Read full review

David Ansen

Barring one dreadfully trumped-up climactic scene, they've managed to avoid the usual asylum-movie cliches.

Peter Stack

A sappy, muddled production that misses the jarring tone of the autobiographical book by Susanna Kaysen on which it is based. Read full review

Stephanie Zacharek

Always worth watching when Angelina Jolie steps to the fore. Somehow, she takes a thuddingly ill-conceived role and turns it into gold Read full review

Susan Wloszczyna

Ryder's commitment is impressive. If her movie only had her courage. Read full review

Abby McGanney Nolan

Contains some nicely restrained turns, like Clea Duval as Kaysen's Oz-obsessed roommate, but mainly it's a showcase for Ryder's winsome victim Read full review

Jami Bernard

Unusual in that it spotlights a common but largely unsung variety of teenage female angst. Read full review

Stephen Holden

A small, intense period piece with a tough-love attitude toward lazy, self-indulgent little girls flirting with madness. Read full review

Film.comPeter Brunette

An excellent coming-of-age story that is, for once, and very happily, focussed on a teenage girl. Read full review

Mr. ShowbizMichael Atkinson

Mangold ultimately delivers the same film any number of other Hollywood journeyman could've made from this material, and the results are predictable and stale.

Rita Kempley

Tired conventions, hoary themes and obvious conclusions. Read full review

Dallas ObserverJean Oppenheimer

Doesn't come close to matching the emotional depth and power of Frank Perry's 1962 "David and Lisa," the most involving and affecting film I've ever seen about teenagers and mental illness. Read full review

Ernest Hardy

Mangold can't escape the fact that instead of someone in the throes of a genuine existential crisis, his star comes off as -- to paraphrase nurse Whoopi Goldberg -- a spoiled, lazy girl who's afraid to face life. Read full review

Film.comGemma Files

Ends up suffering from the classic diseases of book-to-film adaptation: triteness, overreliance of narration, and a general "need" to impose classic dramatic structure on what is not a particularly dramatic narrative.

Film.comJohn Hartl

Mangold ultimately can't displace memories of "An Angel at My Table," "Lilith," "The Snake Pit," "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden" and other, stronger accounts of young women placed in mental institutions. Read full review

Ann Hornaday

It's as if the book itself has been locked up and institutionalized, forced to conform to a system that all but obliterates its own unique personality.

David Sterritt

For a movie about people with hugely complicated inner lives, this sadly unconvincing drama stays resolutely on the surface, rarely hinting at anything like an insight or idea. Read full review