Words on Bathroom Walls

Nick Naveda's strong, smart script is based on the award-winning novel by Julia Walton. Adam is a perceptive and sympathetic character and director Thor Freudenthal brings us inside his perception of the world with striking visuals.

Plummer’s genuine, heartfelt performance will likely go a long way in humanizing a diagnosis that is often unfairly stigmatized.

Eager to split the difference between age-appropriate entertainment and raw honesty, Words on Bathroom Walls hedges a bit in its final act, delivering the kind of happy ending only seen in movies . . . while slyly resisting tying things up in a neat bow.

Words on Bathroom Walls has its moments and its heart is in the right place, but the missteps are too many and too big for the story to carry the day.

When Words on Bathroom Walls is at its sunniest and most blithe, the moral of the story feels a little more like a punchline than is appropriate.

There are pockets of truth, grace and pain in this portrait of troubled adolescence, and its talented young stars know where to find them; like many a nervous teen, however, the film itself is caught between standing out and fitting in.

The film reeks of the extremely idealistic notions of young love that plague many a YA adaptation.

One of the best movies which gives mental illnesses more human perspective. Big, Big, like

This is a drama about a teenager diagnosed with schizophrenia and his efforts to hide it from a potential girlfriend. No, it is not as maudlin as that sounds, it is very well acted by Charlie Plummer with a good supporting cast including Andy Garcia, Taylor Russell, and Beth Grant. It is fairly realistic portrayal of mental illness and how difficult of a time care givers have dealing with the sufferer. They also show the character being given different drugs that either fail or have terrible side effects. The problem with mental illness is that is so difficult to get measurable results - that is, if your BP is 145/90 and the doctor gives you a pill and is now 120/80 the pill is working. It is not so clear with treating mental illness. And there is a quote (I'm paraphrasing) that really hit home for me: "if I had cancer, people would run to help me but if I have mental illness they would run away". I know from personal experience that this line is very true as a close personal friend suffering from mental illness said something eerily similar. Of course there are "Hollywood" touches and clichés but I recommend that you see it.

Hmmmm... difficult one to and review. It is mainly a coming of age romance story with 40% drama and 10% comedy on it, but my issue with it is another:My main concern for it is that it sugarcoat too much a chaotic mental disease showing, let's say... the good side of it.Nevertheless it is a touching coming of age and romance story. The multiple characters of the schizophrenic mind (disease where the invidious dissociate of the reality, by means of auditory, olfactoric, visual or character alterations - without discerning what is real and what is not) are really well portrayed the way they appear on the mind but not always the person realize that what he is viewing isn't real (aka see "Joker"). Charlie Plummer, acts very well on his character - and I realize that the audience of the movie is oriented to teenagers, but I think it could be more comprahanced to a more serious and less sugary view of a so discriminating and serious disease that most people don't really know (and thus also making newer generations aware that it exists and can me manageable, but not cured).This condition is not portrayed very often in cinema, and I remember few movies that addresses it (like the really heavy drama "Jacob's Ladder", 1990), and lightly show on another's as just hallucinations.I think that this one has a heavy influence of Netflix "Atypical" series but it could be a bit more different than this one. Aside from that it is heartwarming: my score 7,0 out of 10,0 / B.

(Mauro Lanari) It starts pretty well, then too many things take over: the inevitable biracial relationship, the atrocious Drew Barrymore, van Gogh's sunflowers, the theme of faith, the problem of socio-economic inequality with Maya and her family. Whereupon the classic problems of adolescence, beginning with the oedipal complex, prevail over schizophrenia, and mental illness is resolved into a narrative pretext in an attempt to differentiate the film from the usual coming-of-age story.

The better functioning of this film will depend on the criteria of each viewer, and I say this because of the way in which the audience will seek to digest the content of the story, since to me it seemed neglected, considering that in its attempt to make it friendly, I firmly believe it minimizes the effects of a mental disorder, in order to give function to its youthful romantic plot. It's not melodramatic and at least that's appreciated, but the facade of idealism will only take you so far, the rest doesn't do its job.