The biggest problem here is right there in the title, taken from a little girl's cutesy term for her bipolar father's condition: it pretties up the nightmare. Writer-director Maya Forbes wants you to feel like you're being shown the difficult truth of a family wracked by mental illness. But the truth is, Mark Ruffalo's portrayal of a manic-depressive isn't manic enough or depressive enough to convey that difficulty. He comes off more quirky than anything else: a round peg in a square-hole world who loves his wife and daughters like crazy but sometimes lets his weirdness and/or sadness get in the way. There's a touch of chaotic menace at the outset when Mom and the kids run to the car and he rips out the starter cables, but after that, most of the suffering comes from Mom's (an empathetic Zoe Saldana) attempt to make a career for herself as a black woman in the '70s, and the kids' extreme embarrassment over their situation. It still works, however, as an engaging drama about an unconventional family striving to make a go of it in the face of terrible obstacles. (2015) — Matthew Lickona
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