VeteranLight I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Spidersecu Don't Believe the Hype

TaryBiggBall It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Loui Blair It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

Tom DeFelice Oh the inhumanity of being wealthy, young and over privileged while living the easy life in Manhattan. His parents are divorced (though he "works" at his mother's art gallery and has full use of his father's beach front "cottage"). His grandmother dies and leaves him her home and it's contents. To think his parents want him to sell it all for...money! Such heartache. Such drama.The acting is first rate. Cinematography and production values are good. The one problem is the script. When the revolution comes, these people will be the first ones put up against the wall.The characters are unsympathetic. The problems are nonexistent. It's not funny enough to be comedy and not serious enough to be tragedy. All it is, is a group of self-centered rich people stroking themselves. What a waste of 95 minutes.

azrael-seraphin To all of those people out there commenting on how bad the acting was or how poorly the script was written or how there was no plot to the movie. You. Are. Wrong. As someone who read, and absolutely loved, the book I would like to say how much it meant to me that someone else enjoyed this book enough to craft it into a movie. When I first found this piece I was incredibly moved by it. Having gone through trials and tribulations as James had, finding someone out there, even fictional, who had experiences similar to my own was a godsend. I'd been there. I knew the pain of not belonging and the pressure to do so. I'd had those same hopeless thoughts. This book, if not saved than severely changed my life. So to all of you ragging on this movie because of its "flaws", you don't understand the message behind it, and I feel extremely sorry for you.

SerenityStone This movie kind of reminds me of The Art of Getting By, but the main character was not as likable or accessible. Most of the time, I though he was annoying and affected. Many of the scenes rang false and the accompanying dialogue seemed to be written by a first-year psychologist student. However, the saving grace is the second-half of the film. Once the life-coach aspect comes into play, the movie improves dramatically. The main character's scenes with Lucy Lu felt real and not like the psycho-analysis that permeated the first-half of the movie. I really enjoyed the scenes in Washington and they really captured the claustrophobic feeling of the main character. Finally seeing what happened made the main character more sympathetic and less insufferable. Decent film

gradyharp James Cameron's story SOMEDAY THIS PAIN WILL BE USEFUL TO YOU is coming of age tale that is, at turns, funny, sad, tender, and sophisticated. As adapted for the screen by director Roberto Faenza with Cameron and Dahlia Heyman this becomes an experimental film that will delight many and confuse some. The cast is excellent and once the audience moves into the rhythm of the narrated story it is difficult not to re-live youth and pull for the lad whose story this is.James Sveck (Toby Regbo) is a lonely young teenager who is tortured by his grossly unstable home environment and is fraught with hating people, suicidal thoughts, depression, and the preference for solitude. It is the summer before he goes off to college at Brown University and he is conflicted: his vain Lothario father (Peter Gallagher) insists that he go to college, his gallery owner mother (Marcia Gay Harden) has just returned form Las Vegas and her third failed marriage - this time to a compulsive gambler (Stephen Lang); his sister Gillian (Deborah Ann Woll) is writing her memoir and falling for an older married Polish professor; and James is working with his mother's gallery director (O'Ryan Graves), trying to make since of art, people, relationships and the chaos of the world that confuses him - the last thing he wants is to enter the college world. His mother lines him up with a Life Coach (Lucy Liu) and slowly James begins to come to grips with a past bad memory and to learn to accept who he is as someone worth living. James only loving connection to the world is his grandmother (Ellen Burstyn) and from her he learns a lot about the vagaries of life and how to cope. The story is told in the first person narration which helps give an intimate inside view of James as he works through his life at the therapy sessions which his parents insist he attend and it is in this manner that we learn about James's past and present through the stories he tells and his recounting of previous therapy sessions and the ambivalences and uncertainties of adolescence.The film manages to balance teenage angst and relationship failures with an equal amount of drama and comedy. This is one of those films that linger in memory long after the final credits. Grady Harp