The premise of It’s Kind Of A Funny Story resembles what would happen if you took One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, dumbed down the characters and made the entire story worthy of an ABC Friday night sit com. It may be one of the lamest films the usually reliable Focus Features (think The Kids Are All Right) has ever released.

While the advertising revolves around the currently popular Zach Galafianakis (and possibly Emma Roberts) the film is a vehicle for Keir Gilchrist. Gilchrist, an 18-year old who’s been professionally acting all his teen life, looks to be half way between a young Keanu Reeves and a young Justin Long. Gilchrist plays a suicidal high school student who has himself committed to a city hospital psych ward after he shows up at an ER in the middle of the night.

If the film followed a dramatic storyline it might have been bearable but the filmmakers constantly give the audience cliché crazy characters like the wacky guy on so many drugs he drools rather than swing a ping-pong racket, or repeated gags involving projectile vomit. Worse still, the directors present life in a mental ward as a type of summer camp with easily bribed guards and unlocked exits. No – that would be the rehab that Lindsay Lohan checked into. Even more surprisingly one of the directors also helmed the superior Half Nelson.

It’s Kind of A Funny Story will come and go in a flash and nobody will even remember it in a few months. Fans of the supporting cast (that includes Galifianakis, Roberts, Jeremy Davies and Viola Davis) may forgive the broadly drawn characterizations. After all, we’re talking about a feel good movie revolving around suicide.

- Michael Bergeron