This feels like an autobiography even though it's not stated. It starts as a stock story of the hip underacheiving dad, Max, and his burgher Karen of an ex-wife ,Jenne, fighting over the care of their disabled kid, Ezra. In this case its autism. Naturally the ex-wife sides with officialdom believing the "experts" know what's best. This is the setup, back story, or whatever you want to call it. The editing is strange for this part. It felt like I was watching a trailer.
The movie really starts when the boy hears the ex-wife's burgher boyfriend joking about knowing a guy who will kill the Max. The kid hears this runs into the street and gets hit by a car, which brings in the bureaucrats with credentials. They want to send max to a day-institution and put him on anti-psychotics. Max punches the corrupt doctor who wants to drug Ezra. As a restult of this Max has to let them medicate Ezra and accept a long restraining order preventing him from seeing Ezra or do time to which Max capitulates to his almost immediate regret,
This is where Max takes on a road trip where Ezras symptoms are mitigated through several interactions with normal people, normal meaning not the credentialed know-it-alls who actually only know procedures. The road trip ends with the FBI, of which one of the agents which looks like Suella Braverman, arriving to arrest Max and take Ezra who knows where. This involves more mitigation of Ezra's symptoms but how the confrontation is resolved isn't shown, we only see the results. I don't know what the story teller's analogous term to the physical modeler's term "nernies" is, but but this movie had a few good ones.
I didn't recognize much of the cast. Rainn Wilson is in it and I don't even know why I know who he is. I'd seen the guy who played Max in something. Whoopie Goldberg and Robert De Niro were both in it playing the same types they always play in peripheral roles in this case.
The kid who played Ezra was great. I don't know if he is a real autist who managed to do movie work or if he is a normal kid, or as normal as a child actor can be, who's just really good at acting.
The movie really starts when the boy hears the ex-wife's burgher boyfriend joking about knowing a guy who will kill the Max. The kid hears this runs into the street and gets hit by a car, which brings in the bureaucrats with credentials. They want to send max to a day-institution and put him on anti-psychotics. Max punches the corrupt doctor who wants to drug Ezra. As a restult of this Max has to let them medicate Ezra and accept a long restraining order preventing him from seeing Ezra or do time to which Max capitulates to his almost immediate regret,
This is where Max takes on a road trip where Ezras symptoms are mitigated through several interactions with normal people, normal meaning not the credentialed know-it-alls who actually only know procedures. The road trip ends with the FBI, of which one of the agents which looks like Suella Braverman, arriving to arrest Max and take Ezra who knows where. This involves more mitigation of Ezra's symptoms but how the confrontation is resolved isn't shown, we only see the results. I don't know what the story teller's analogous term to the physical modeler's term "nernies" is, but but this movie had a few good ones.
I didn't recognize much of the cast. Rainn Wilson is in it and I don't even know why I know who he is. I'd seen the guy who played Max in something. Whoopie Goldberg and Robert De Niro were both in it playing the same types they always play in peripheral roles in this case.
The kid who played Ezra was great. I don't know if he is a real autist who managed to do movie work or if he is a normal kid, or as normal as a child actor can be, who's just really good at acting.