WORDS ON BATHROOM WALLS – Review

WORDS ON BATHROOM WALLS tells the familiar story of bright 16-year old Adam (Charlie Plummer), who suffers from schizophrenia. Expelled following a fistfight, he is sent to a Catholic school to finish out his senior year. Adam makes little attempt to fit in until he meets Maya (Taylor Russell), a hyper-intelligent girl from the wrong side of the tracks and there is an instant soulful and romantic connection. When he starts hearing voices and seeing people who aren’t there, he attempts to hide his illness because he fears it will interfere with his dream of attending culinary school.

The screenplay for WORDS ON BATHROOM WALLS stuffs in every cliché about teen angst yet is a laudable attempt to seem heartfelt without too much blatant manipulation. It’s an uneven film, but generally succeeds thanks especially to a winning central performance Charlie Plummer. The film itself often seems schizophrenic. The lightness of tone and playful score is often at odds with a serious story that explores the need for schizophrenics to stay on their medication. WORDS ON BATHROOM WALLS was directed by Thor Freudenthal, who directed the first DIARY OF A WIMPY KID movie and his new film at times plays like a belated entry in that franchise, as if the wimpy kid has grown up but is now battling demons more serious than an obnoxious brother Roderick. Like the Wimpy Kid films, WORDS ON BATHROOM WALLS leans on an over-reliance of self-aware monologues addressed to the camera that seem gimmicky. There’s also a trio of imaginary friends only he can see and only when his meds aren’t kicking in that are supposed to be personifications of his illness: a muscle-bound bouncer known as the ‘Enforcer’ (Lobo Sebastian), the New Age cheerleader/fairy Rebecca (AnnaSophia Robb), and Joaquin (Devon Bostick), who wears a bathrobe but whose purpose is otherwise unclear (the less said about a rumbling and grumbling black cloud that follows Adam around the better).

Charlie Plummer is likable as Adam and makes you really root for this kid. Less successful is Taylor Russell’s Maya, the type of annoying overachiever too often in these types of films that doesn’t ring true. Molly Parker is fine as Adam’s concerned mom while a cast-against-type Walton Goggins brings great depth to his role as her boyfriend.

WORDS ON BATHROOM WALLS asks an interesting question – should the mentally ill be forcibly medicated? It’s a good question since each person reacts differently to each treatment and sometimes the cure is more distressing than the symptoms of schizophrenia. Here Adam loses his sense of taste when his meds are working, which is a huge problem seeing how he aspires to be a professional chef. The script explores various facets of schizophrenia but it doesn’t dwell on them long enough to depress the viewer or make the film dark. It is a bittersweet, if occasionally precious, teen movie that ends happily. Sufferers of schizophrenia may feel that the film trivializes their illness but at the end of the day it is a film about young adulthood, not mental illness.

2 of 4 Stars