I Hate Mental Illness Exploitation Films

Hollywood has done to the mentally ill what it did to the Native American, reduced them to a caricature. My numero uno Hollywood mental health zombie film is "The Other Sister". You can't take enough drugs to prepare you for this P.C. yuppie fantasy about two mentally challenged young adults that fall in love and try to live as stumbling bumbling horny hobbits in their own apartment. I don't know why Hollywood feels the need to hyper-sexualize these people. Perhaps they think sex has some therapeutic value in restoring their serotonin levels. The Other Sister and her boyfriend are depicted as these stuttering, duck walking, perpetually grinning, clowns on crack. I'm watching "Mozart and the Whale" while I'm typing this. It's about two young adults with Aspergers Syndrome (aka Autism Spectrum Disorder). Obviously, the directors don't know anybody with mental illness. The characters are all bent out of shape and raving mad over things that a true Aspergarian wouldn't give a crap about. It's like they took a couple of yuppie neurotics and garnished them Autistic traits the way I pour mustard on a hot dog. Hollywood, please! Stop this cheap exploitation of the mentally ill. If the subject isn't really that commercial, don't take the cheap-shot with bad actors, vacuous plots and characters who shout instead of talk, waddle instead of walk, and actually care what someone else is thinking. I thought I had Aspergers-Lite but CP says I'm just rude.

It's not that Hollywood can't get it right, it's that they just don't care. Besides animated films, what does Hollywood do well at all? I can't wait to see Shrek hooking-up in his next sequel. In the past great movies about
mental illness have been made e.g. Beautiful Mind, Sling Blade, The Snake Pit, Girl Interrupted, Cuckoos Nest. Claire Danes did a great job portraying the real life autistic Temple Grandin who revolutionized the cattle industry. Mental Illness is illness, no matter how Hollywood tries to portray it as cute and quirky. All they accomplish with their lame attempts at sanitizing and disinfecting it is to create schlock that pisses me off. Where is my Lyrica?


Karl: Some folks call it a sling blade, I call it a Kaiser blade