I read the book when it first came out and watched the movie --with my teenage daughter-- when it premiered a week or so ago.
The book was good, it was an honest account of the mom's confusion, anger and terror over her daughter's behavior. The movie more or less followed the book in a factual way, but really didn't capture the voice of the mom. Even though Mom spent vast amounts of money on Wilderness and an EG boarding school, she doesn't credit (or discredit) those things for the happy turn her daughter's life eventually took.
In fact, the daughter never "graduated" from the boarding school, she ran off and spent some time on the streets (Seattle, I think) before coming home, going to an alternative school and getting on with her life. This was shown in the movie, but I don't think it's a part that will stick in viewers' minds.
Also, in the book and in the movie, Augusta's best friend at the EG school is a young woman who never should have been placed there (she'd been molested by a family friend, and the family just wanted her out of the way). The girl completes suicide while in the care and custody of the school, though I think the method differs from the book to the movies. This incident should be a glaring indictment for the industry, but again, I think the average viewer will think "How sad" and not much else.
To be honest, when I read the book, I didn't know much about the "troubled-parent" industry, even though I was becoming a troubled parent. I do not remember coming away from the book with any sense of endorsement of the industry by the author.
As far as the movie, I think just by the fact that it presents the story as "Augusta went bad then Mom did this and this and this and ultimately Augusta got happy and healthy the end" it would leave most viewers with the idea that the this and this and this that Mom did must have made Augusta well, because otherwise it wouldn't make any sense.
Those of us who know better should watch it so that if any of our friends a relatives see it we can explain what really happened to Augusta--she grew up.
