REVIEW: It's Kind of a Funny Story Is Funnier -- And More Compassionate -- Than You Might Think

But their sidelong, cockeyed style also saves the movie from sinking into the dread "They're not crazy, they're special" category. Because Boden and Fleck don't treat their characters as victims, they run the risk of trivializing those characters' problems. But it's a risk that pays off, and one the actors are in sync with. Gilchrist (who appears on United States of Tara) is so regular-looking that he's dangerously low on charisma. But Craig is a work in progress, not a finished human being, and Gilchrist navigates his character's admitted sketchiness with humility and a sense of humor. Roberts is a bit too winsome in some scenes, but in the end she balances her character's wispy fragility with the right amount of tartness.

But this is really Galifianakis' movie. After seeing It's Kind of a Funny Story in Toronto, I heard some fellow attendees grumbling that he was "just being Zach Galifianakis." Yes and no. The performance certainly incorporates the actor's familiar lumbering-bear carriage and channeled-from-Planet Zontar rhythms. But Galifianakis funnels all of his quirks, particularly that shaggy, "Who, me?" mix of diffidence and blustering confidence, into the service of rounding out the character. It's less a selfless performance than one that's full of self; it's haphazardly but effectively Methodlike.

Galifianakis' Bobby skulks through the movie in a bulky, brackish-colored sweater that can't hide the more physical aspects of his performance. His back is always straight, and his barrel chest is puffed out as if to advertise his unassailable self-possession, but his legs shuffle somewhat lackadaisically -- it's as if, inside him, two separate motors were fighting for domination, one timid and uncertain, the other swaggering. Individual sections of his hair jet off in random crazy-person directions, but he speaks with such dry authority -- in one scene, giving Craig some exceedingly smart and much-needed dating advice -- that his air of uncombed nonchalance begins to look like a style choice and not just bad grooming.

The movie's most obviously metaphorical scene is also its most exhilarating one, a fantasy sequence in which Craig, Bobby and other denizens of this not-so-nuts nuthouse perform David Bowie and Queen's Under Pressure. Dressed in sequins, satin and feathers instead of their usual depressive garb, they're dream versions of themselves, bolder, braver happier people than they (or perhaps most of us) know how to be in real life. Galifianakis' Bobby sports not just a velvet cape but also vast resources of determination and bravado, and there are spangles in his beard instead of crumbs. It's a miraculous, if temporary, transformation, but it also represents a fragile beam of hope. It's Kind of a Funny Story never posits that there's a miracle cure-all for serious depression in; even so, Galifianakis is the picture's modest, stubby patron saint.

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