By Julie Denice Griffin
A movie about a manic-depressive teenage girl who does her best to handle life on her own and seek her way to independence like any normal teenage girl her age - When she thinks her high school teacher, Mr. Pen hates her photography work, she feels rejected and saddened. As a result, she throws her meds out the window on the way home from school with her friends, and ends up going places she did not expect until late that night.
Without her meds, her mind soon controls her responses which she can no longer control. She finds herself in a car with an older, married man talking his head off. On her manic high, she only wants to talk nonstop, and does not have the ability to stop herself from the endless chatter. Although she, innocent just wants to talk - He gets other ideas. Impure. Which she does not have for him at all. Only trying to find a way to make it to her estranged dad's piano concert, she jumps out of the man's car at the junkyard and somehow finds her way back home on a bus.
The mom decides her daughter's mind needs some extra-curriculer stabilization, and admits her into the mental institution after the daughter's poor decision to use a large plant instead of a key to break a window to get back into the house. Her mind energy spins too fast for her to think straight. At least the large family cat shows some care and some loving emotions. She only wanted to get back inside because the comforting high of the manic to be around people wore off, and now she's going into panic mode. The morning started energized. And now.
At the same time Zoe tries to find her dad and heads for an amusement park with big, beautiful, bright lights instead, while unbeknownst to her, the bad boy just hotwired a red sportscar, By the time her mom finds her, she hangs off of the side of the ferris-wheel car with a pink cotton candy and tells her mom to go away. Screaming with delight, she tells everyone she's an experienced trapeze artist. She believes this. As she falls and smacks onto the oblong metal bar below, her mom and everybody else in the audience down below screams too.
Jake, the boy gets out of spending time in a juvenile facility through his rich dad's money and pull. Zoe heads for the bathroom windows as soon as she gets there. "Need any help?" Asks a worker in disguise. "Even if you get past the windows, they still have bars on them." His imaginary friend from the Planet Fluthora, this boy who lives elsewhere ends up there too. An uprising starts, after an anorexic girl named Allie switches med charts to make sure she gets a birthday party. While Keli Martin and James Marsdan fall in love, another friend tells him that his general father sent him there as he considers his gayness a mental instability.
While Zoe strugles with the fact that she needs medicine to function, she despises how it sometimes brings her down to the earth. Below the line of same. She cannot create her artwork without it, and yet she struggles to create her artwork with it although it seems to take much longer. But the other way has her so hyper that she cannot focus. Spinning out of control won't work either. So when she's falsely punished for the bad boy destroying her mini-scale model, she admires him later. After all, she enters the classroom to repair the damages, and he's already in there mending it. She's grateful. A hurt boy who can still repent.
She plays pool like a pool shark though, and says her dad, the famous pianist taught her how. But what she really wants is to work as a photo artist. Her heart's desire? The Mayans. Zoe's anorexic charge, forced to drink protein to gain weight gulps the nasty protein drink down discouragingly. A huge, sloppy-pink drippy birthday cake, her immediate reward comes around the corner of the mental hospitol cafeteria. At least her manipulations made the stubborn sing sweetly. A lit up candle and a black wax cat. Looks delectible.
The camera man for the film seems to keep up with the fast-moving activities of the children well. As the scenarios change quickly from scene-to-scene, the pull to separate Jake and Zoe finds places in all of the adult hearts. The two are shown smartly managing ways to rebel headlong against the traditional establishment of the adults and traverse to find ways to continue to see eachother. With Zoe returning from some time with Jake through ceiling tunnels. Sammy, the boy from another planet, the time traveller takes the blame. He's covered in plaster from when Zoe crossed over, and he said he went to the other planet to meet his girlfriend.
Quite aware of Zoe and Jake's shipboard romance, the adults discuss the best way to handle it. "What are we here? Jailers or therapists?" Asks the gentle, female therapist who sides with the couple. The news of Jake's father's affair makes Jake go crazy with violence though when his father lectures Jake about his relationship with Zoe. Jake ends up in lockdown, and Zoe goes into a catatonic episode, unable to do anything else except sit and stare out of her window, straight ahead.
When the kids kidnap the psychiatrist and break all of the other kids out - They lovingly tell the psychiatrist they're not sure if he's ready for a trip on the outside, as he seems to have somewhat of a negative personality disorder. The kids don't hurt him. But they do take his car and his credit cards. Up to a certain point. Until he calls the authorities. Zoe starts to realize that this is a bad idea when Allie starts asking strangers for crystal meth and realizes she can't make it on the outside without her legal medication. Allie goes into a panic frenzy when the police capture her, not because of the capture, but because she hates for anyone to touch her physically. Zoe worries about Allie, but the others won't let her go back to help the young girl.
Jake gets very disturbed when he accidentally shoots a security guard in the shoulder. The kids all scream at eachother to get him help. Call him an ambulence to ride to safety and refuge. This is enough to make the rest of the group, save Jake and Zoe return to the mental hospitol. Everyone is worried about the missing Zoe going into an out-of-control manic, the surge of energy that soon causes her to stop the car and from Jake and out onto a traffic filled highway. In and out of traffic in her manic to run, get away, she thinks universal thoughts of creativity as she makes her great escape.
The mother begs Timothy Wells and the other kids to help her find her daughter. She explains to them that Zoe needs her medicine just the way that they need food. They finally tell her, her daughter headed to Mexico to photograph the pyramids. And all Zoe can think about is finding her father just so she can watch him play the piano. Gabriellia, the so-so cellist just about clenches that, and even as her dad's young musician girlfriend protests, her father tells his daughter to go back for treatment, as a result.
When she finds out what her dad does behind her back, he breaks trust with her double. And now she knows, it's likely over with him and her for good. Instead of helping her, he has his assistent call the police. One minute, she is in awe watching him play a beautiful piano song. The next she dumps him for an eternity.
This 1997 television drama displays the trauma of one manic-depressive girl's desire to survive enough to live a normal life. Directed by Peter Werner, Kellie Martin plays the seventeen-year old Zoe. Even she and her boyfriend Jake discuss how her father's rejection of her caused the personality split. When Jake tries to coach her down to safety from an abandoned ferris wheel the second time in the movie she climbs on one, the dual reality is nearly fatal. And the second ride delivers a greater set of illusions
Truman 4 Theatres
1614 Jefferson Street, Jefferson City, MO 65109
(573)636-8711
County: Cole, Market: Jefferson City
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