Trying to be all at once a comedy, a drama, a touching memoir and an indie flick, It’s Kind Of A Funny Story fails to be anything much. The relatively charming Keir Gilchrist stars as Craig, a sixteen year old boy who fantasises about killing himself even though his life is essentially completely fine. Deciding to check himself into a hospital (the NHS wouldn’t put up with this shit), he spends 5 days on a psyche ward and gradually realises that he’s being a wanker. It’s not exactly an epic of our time, but it probably would have been alright if it wasn’t utterly dripping with self-importance. Yes, Zach Galifianakis, we’re looking at you. And you’re really enjoying it, aren’t you?

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Poor old Craig is sick of having it so tough. His parents are pressurising, he wants to touch the breasts of his best mate’s girlfriend and he’s about to spend nearly two hours in a film with the stupid one out of The Hangover – his desire to end it all is understandable. But, armed with a self-reflective nature worthy of J.Kyle himself, instead of jumping off a bridge he decides to check himself into a madhouse. There, he meets loveable-but-troubled Bobby (Galifianakis), hot-but-troubled Noelle (Emma Roberts) and various other people who are increasingly cutandpaste-but-troubled. Through hearing their tales, doing some drawings and gazing at an Egyptian, Craig learns two things: 1. His life is actually fine 2. To stay out of shot whenever Zach Galinfianakis feels like its his turn to be in the film.

One of the main problems with It’s Kind Of A Funny Story is the creative decision to break the story up into daily chapters – we begin on Sunday and are told we’ll be kicking about until the following Thursday. Ordinarily this wouldn’t neccessarily be an issue, but seeing as the film moves slower than a plant heptathlon it just means we spend the entire film counting down the days until Craig (and us lowly audience members) are set free. The only thing that breaks the self-indulgent “don’t waste your life, kid” monotony are occasional, apparently utterly random animation sequences and flashbacks presumably meant to appeal to indie sensibilities – sadly all they do is sit uncomfortably in the decidedly unoriginal dialogue. The script is lazy, the plot twists (and by twists, we mean a baleful, plodding lines) are obvious and if it wasn’t for an utterly mental 80s Queen dream sequence I’d have fallen asleep well before half-way. All in all it’s just a bit of a scratchy, irritating mish-mash of questionable comedy, paper-thin well-deep characters and beards. It’s Kind Of A Funny Story is an exceedingly generous description.