This star-studded and heart-warming movie, billed as a comedy drama, highlights the problems of bringing up an autistic child.
Divorced from his wife Jenna (Rose Byrne), former comedy writer Max Bernal (Bobby Cannavale) is a stand-up comedian performing at a local bar. It is not a great gig – but his agent (Whoopi Goldberg) has had trouble with his erratic behaviour and volatile temper.
Living with his father (beautifully played by Robert De Niro) in New York, he finds it difficult to agree with Jenna about how to bring up their precocious autistic child Ezra (William A Fitzgerald, an autistic teenager in his first acting role) whose behaviour often gets him into trouble.
Max wants his child to live like any other kid. When it is suggested that Ezra be medicated with anti-psychotics and sent to a special school he strongly objects, assaults the doctor, and is served a three months restraining order preventing him from seeing his son.
Feeling that he has no other choice, he kidnaps Ezra in the middle of the night and takes off in his father’s car on a road trip across country to Los Angeles, where he is to appear on the Tommy Kimmel Show – chased by Jenna, the police and child services.
Director Tony Goldwyn (Conviction) and scriptwriter Tony Spiridakis have been friends for 40 years. The script was inspired by Spiridakis’s relationship with his own autistic son, and marriage break-up. He started writing the film many years before it was made, collaborating with Goldwyn.
The film employed several autistic crew and cast members, as well as people who have family members with autism.
100 minutes.
Showing at Luna Leederville from Thursday, August 1.
Watch the trailer…
