Girl, Interrupted, the mediocre screen adaptation of Susanna Kaysen’s similarly mediocre novel, is released on video June 6. Winona Ryder can put an audience to sleep more efficiently than a Sealy mattress. Our chicks-in-the-loony-bin picks are like a bucket of NoDoz.
• FRANCES (1982)–If lobotomies were handed out after every nervous breakdown (like ’30s film star Frances Farmer), nobody would have frontal lobes.
• BETTY BLUE (1986)–Two young French people hump so much, they go off the deep end. How could that possibly be bad?
• A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3: DREAM WARRIORS (1987)–Was it really Freddy who killed the institutionalized cast, or was it the theme song by Dokken?
• SYBIL (1976)–Sally Field is typecast as a woman with 16 separate personalities. “They like us, they really…” oy gevalt.
• THE PARENT TRAP (1961)–A pathetic Hayley Mills, wrought with grief from her parents’ divorce, convinces herself she has a mischievous “twin” at summer camp; together, “they” scheme to keep Mom and Dad together. A depressing study in the psychology of broken homes.