Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to do a high five! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about “The Monkey’s” damn dirty ape, the family story “The Unbreakable Boy” and the Canadian drama “Morningside.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I join the CTV NewsChannel to talk about “The Monkey’s” damn dirty ape, the family story “The Unbreakable Boy” and the Canadian drama “Morningside.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: Based on the New York Times bestselling book of the same name, “The Unbreakable Boy,” a new family drama now playing on theatres, is the true story of how Austin LeRette, a boy born with autism and Osteogenesis Imperfecta, or brittle bone disease, transforms his parent’s world. “I wish I could enjoy anything as much as my son enjoys everything.”
CAST: Zachary Levi, Meghann Fahy, Jacob Laval, Drew Powell, Patricia Heaton. Directed by Jon Gunn.
REVIEW: At one point in “An Unbreakable Boy” Austin’s younger brother Logan (Gavin Warren) accuses a schoolmate of being “a cliché,” but he could be talking about any of the movie’s characters.
Given Austin’s various conditions the story is somewhat unique, but the situations surrounding the character are not. It feels like a series of platitudes cobbled together to garner maximum emotional impact as it winds its way to a feel good, happy ending.
Father Scott (Zachary Levi) is an alcoholic, drinking away his career while opening up a schism within the family. Mother Teresa (Meghann Fahy) is frustrated, prone to tears and lashing out. Both characters exist as a reaction to the boy’s diseases, and how they shape the family’s dynamic, rather than being about the boy himself.
It is the much more common story about a man and his moral failings as a husband and a father—“This is not what I thought it would be like,” Scott says. “I feel like I’m failing every day. And the harder I try the worse I do. I can’t seem to figure him out.”—than it is the story of Austin triumphs.
It’s also an example of how tough it is to convincingly play drunk on camera. It’s not about lurching about and slurred speech, it’s about doing your best to not appear drunk. Scott’s alcoholism, like so many other things in the film, is heightened for cinematic effect, which blunts the power of it.
“An Unbreakable Boy” presents as a look at a child with unique needs but is more about the effect Austin has on the family than Austin itself. What could have been an interesting study of Austin’s world is, instead, a typical family drama content with skimming the surface.
“Ordinary Angels,” a new faith-based film starring Hillary Swank and Alan Ritchson, and now playing in theatres, is an uplifting film about the virtues of not taking “no” for an answer.
Based on a true story, “Ordinary Angels” sees Ritchson, still pumped-up from playing former U.S. Army military policeman on Amazon Prime’s “Reacher,” as Ed Schmitt, the recently widowed single father of two preteen girls, Ashley (Skywalker Hughes) and Michelle (Emily Mitchell).
If it wasn’t for bad luck, Ed would have any luck at all.
“Have faith,” his mother (Nancy Travis) tells him.
“A lotta good faith is doing me,” he says.
Already drowning in debt from his late wife’s medical bills, Ed is also struggling with Michelle’s life-threatening liver condition. She will need a transplant, but finding a donor could take years, and until then, the medical bills will continue to pile up.
In another part of town, while Michelle waits for a new liver, Sharon Stevens (Swank), a brassy hairdresser with a drinking problem, is doing everything she can to ruin hers. She is bold, the kind of drunk who dances on (and falls off of) bars, and says “I ain’t great with boundaries.”
The morning after a bender, while buying beer at a local shop, a newspaper headline about Michelle’s dire condition grabs her by the heart. Uninvited, she shows up at Ed’s church as the preacher implores his flock to, “Find a way to help this family.”
Sharon trades her enthusiasm for drinking with fund-raising efforts to help Ed and his family dig themselves out of their financial hole. After she arrives at Ed’s home with an enveloped stuffed with $3000, he reluctantly accepts her assistance. “I’m good at a lot of things,” she says. “Taking ‘no’ for an answer isn’t one of them.”
Co-writers Kelly Fremon Craig (who recently wrote and directed the film adaptation of “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret”) and Meg Tilly, lean on the details of true story from 1994 in linear fashion. So, there are no big surprises in “Ordinary Angels,” just compelling characters and a three Kleenex story.
Ritchson leaves Jack Reacher’s sarcastic brashness on the shelf to play Ed as a quiet, broken man who puts his family’s needs ahead of his own. Without time to properly grieve his late wife, he has tamped down his heartache as he carries the weight of the world on his very broad shoulders.
Swank gives Sharon a blustery shell that camouflages a troubled past. Her soured relationship with her adult son and alcoholism are confronted, but neither are fully explored. Sharon says she doesn’t like to talk about herself, but a bit more backstory may have fleshed out the psychology behind her extraordinary generosity. Still, Swank makes her forceful in an Erin Brockovich kind of way.
“Ordinary Angels” is formulaic—the highs are really high, the lows are really low—and the climatic race against time goes on too long to be truly exciting, but the film’s themes of the importance of community, of the healing power of kindness and of how one person can make a difference, may tug at the heartstrings.
