Happiness Runs

Planning to live in a polyamorous commune and raise undisciplined, free-range children? Don’t. Writer-director Sherman based this obtuse psychosexual dystopia on his own hippie upbringing; the result is virtually teeming with bitter resentment for the drug-addled parent collective that inadvertently turned his adolescence into a chapter from Lord of the Flies. The anger is palpable, but the themes and characters are hardly resonant. Rarely has anything so lurid seemed so downright mundane. Lesson: Leave harrowing tales of pubescence to Larry Clark.—Stephen Garrett

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