Entertainment

Five Jennifer Aniston-produced shorts are ‘Crazy’

MENTAL: Jennifer Hudson plays a tormented war vet in tomorrow’s unusual Lifetime movie of five interconnected films on mental illness. (
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Call me crazy, but Lifetime’s original movie,“Call Me Crazy
: A Five Film,” did make me weepy enough to almost enjoy myself.

The movie — actually a compilation of five shorts that sometimes tie together — uses the same star-studded format as Lifetime’s earlier “Five” movie about breast cancer.

This time the subject is mental illness and the effect it has on both those suffering with it and those close to them.

Produced by Jennifer Aniston, the 15-to-20-minute shorts are packed with big name talent like Academy Award-winning actresses Jennifer Hudson, Melissa Leo and Octavia Spencer, as well as Sarah Hyland, Sofia Vassilieva, Brittany Snow, Ernie Hudson, Jason Ritter, Jean Smart, Lea Thompson, Melanie Griffith and Chelsea Handler.

Behind the cameras, Laura Dern, Bryce Dallas Howard, Bonnie Hunt and Ashley Judd handle the directing chores.

The first short, “Lucy,” stars Snow as a law-school student with schizophrenia who has to be hospitalized when her condition becomes dangerous.

Spencer, as her shrink, wants her to return to law school and focus on becoming a lawyer for mental health patients.

“Grace” stars Leo as the divorced, bipolar mom of a teen girl (Hyland) who has suffered a lifetime of her mother’s extreme highs and desperate lows.

Both women are so good (nobody does “crazy” like Leo) that you’ll be pulling for both, although you may want to smack the mom before she gets into that car.

“Allison” brings Lucy back when her younger sister, Allison (Vassilieva), brings her boyfriend home for the weekend to meet her parents (Smart and Richard Gilliland). All hell breaks loose when Allison, thinking that crazy Lucy is safely locked away, discovers that her sister — who once tried to kill her during a psychotic break — is home as well.

“Eddie,” directed by Hunt, stars Thompson as the long-suffering wife of a stand-up comic (Mitch Rouse) who tells jokes for a living and yet lives with overwhelming depression.

Will he kill himself if he doesn’t slay ’em every night?

The final story, “Maggie,” directed by Judd, stars Hudson as a returning Iraq war veteran who has a young son who’s been living with her dad (Ernie Hudson), while she was deployed. Turns out when she was in Iraq, she’d been raped repeatedly by her commanding officer.

When she suffers a psychotic break, she mistakes her father for her commanding officer and tries to kill him. Guess who has gotten her law degree just in time to start defending mental patients?

While it’s all too pat, offering instant fixes, there’s still enough here to keep you watching.

Think of “Call Me Crazy” as an instant cure if you are still suffering ITDS — “In Treatment” Deprivation Syndrome, that is.