Review: WORDS ON BATHROOM WALLS

Adam has a secret. It's so bad that he has to be inserted into the last term of a Catholic School after a bizarre incident at his normal school. The incident was a psychotic break and the secret is that he has Schizophrenia. It makes him hear dark, damaging voices and see imaginary characters who variously feed him new age blather, act like 90s teen comedy sidekicks or threaten to beat up anyone who comes close. He makes it through a hallucinatory interview to get admitted into the new school and slowly comes to terms with his new pharmaceutical regime which erases the playmates and gets him in with the local genius who agrees to tutor him through this trying time. She's beautiful and from the wrong side of the tracks and his new drug has side effects that take his self control. What could go wrong?

If you're thinking a YA Lit version of A Beautiful Mind you're not far off. This film plays its genre with a confident lack of challenge, doing its job before the credits roll and ticking all the boxes. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to watch any genre hit the marks and leave. It usually means the work on the theme is the important thing to fill the vehicle. Here it's the question of trust, trust in self as well as others. The plane takes off, flies and lands comfortably.

At the centre of the cast is Charlie Plummer, a kind of teenage Thurston Moore who begins with instant appeal by talking through the fourth wall (past his therapist) with a host of pop culture references and clever self-awareness. He's fine but suffers along with the rest of the movie from a lack of edge. We get so very cosy with the situation's fragility that the inevitable second act break feels manageable rather than high stakes. This is a pity as the issue at the heart, a young person with a young person's disorder, might have warranted more than a few moments of audio magic and CG. If, for example the imaginary friend crew had a hint of darkness or desperate hollowness that would have testified to Adam's pain, we might have had something more substantial. While the opening scenes played out (and they are bright and energetic) I mused about the possibility of a story where a kid's creativity is indistinguishable from his schizophrenia but realised I'd already seen Donnie Darko.