This YA drama about a teenager with schizophrenia is well-intentioned and well-acted but relies too heavily on the cliches of high-school life
Yet again,
Hollywood is here to educate us about mental health – but not with too much realism, because that would be a downer. This is a lively and sensitively acted YA drama about a teenager with schizophrenia from Diary of a Wimpy Kid director Thor Freudenthal, but it feels like a semi-copout.
Freudenthal clearly wants to say something deep and important about illness and stigma but at the same time appears to have cleared the shelves of sanitiser in Boots. After promising start, Words on Bathroom Walls turns into another prettified, picturesque portrait of mental illness. And surely even teenagers will feel as if they’ve seen the big-hugs happy ending here a hundred times already.