Manic

Impressions before seeing it
Their on-screen relationship seemed to be celebrated by fans in (500) Days of Summer, but I thought it would be interesting to take a look back at the first time Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel worked together. People generally liked this movie as well, and I was curious as to why when I knew it was about young people in an asylum.

How was it?
We usually think of asylums as being for the insane, but these kids aren't. At least not in the strait jacketed dementia sort of way. Mostly they've been institutionalized because troubled home lives have made them excessively violent and emotionally unstable. Dr. Monroe (Don Cheadle, playing it calm and soft-spoken like a good counselor should) subjects them to group therapy sessions in an attempt to rehabilitate them.

Director Jordan Melamed applies a gung-ho documentary style that is highly effective here, as it makes the characters and events feel very real. I don't even think the actors were wearing makeup, which is very rare, but then this is an indie movie and not a Hollywood blockbuster. Watching these characters, it was sometimes hard to like them because they're so damaged, but it was also hard to hate them because it's not their fault they turned out that way. This puts you in a neutral territory that pushes you toward rooting for Dr. Monroe, because he genuinely wants to help these kids but is starting to doubt himself. I like how he would ease into the group therapy, my favourite example being one where he started off with everyone discussing whether Batman could defeat Wolverine, and then when one kid complained that it was a stupid argument because they're both fictional, he transitioned into having them talk about real fights they've been in. Smooth, Doc.

Recommendation
Ultimately, what Manic reminds me of is One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, but for Generation X. There's even a quiet Native American kid and some basketball scenes. I enjoy movies like this that take an intimate look at something I'm not personally familiar with, like asylums, so I found it to be fascinating and sometimes even funny. It has a certain charm to it in spite of a cast of characters I wouldn't necessarily want to be in the same room with. For a low budget movie that is 11 years old (actually, it feels older), it holds up well.