While normally I’m a soft touch for any film about autistic children, one just can’t let something as sappy and annoyingly didactic as this road movie get by without some honest assessment. It’s obvious the film-makers mean well and no doubt the work comes from a place of love and probably personal experience, but that doesn’t negate how profoundly irritating the main adult character is, as well as the conflict-hugs-closure structure, and the hammy acting from a cast that could do better.
The annoying adult in the room is Max (Bobby Cannavale), a New Jersey wise guy who is trying to make it as a standup comedian. Max’s idea of being brutally honest on stage is to do material about his adolescent son Ezra’s autism. That would be fine if it were actually daring, honest or actually funny, but instead it’s jokes about how Ezra (played by William A Fitzgerald) wouldn’t talk for ages as a baby and now he never shuts up.
