The factor about separating the artwork from the artist is that individuals are sometimes much more inclined to take action if the “artwork” isn’t a generic piece of faith-based schlock, and the “artist” hasn’t made a wide range of disqualifying feedback that pertain on to the topic of their newest movie. Living proof: It’s powerful to just accept Zachary Levi because the beleaguered father of an autistic little one when the previous “Shazam!” star has publicly sworn his allegiance to a person who believes that vaccines trigger autism.
In an ideal vacuum, I suppose it could be doable to look at “The Unbreakable Boy” as a benign — if uncommonly fundamental — addition to the ever-growing subgenre of “inspirational” motion pictures wherein neurodivergent munchkins are used as human props for his or her dad and mom’ religious progress. In an ideal vacuum, it could be doable to think about how Kingdom Story Firm’s (“I Nonetheless Imagine,” “Jesus Revolution,” and many others.) newest attraction to megachurch America would possibly function a flimsy supply of consolation for some hypothetical couple who’s struggling to boost a baby with mental variations — a battle that may solely get an entire lot tougher if the administration Levi helps decides to get rid of the DOE, which might severely impression the educational alternatives obtainable to the children most prone to being left behind.
Alas, a lot as I’d want that Levi solely existed in motion pictures that no person needs to see, his weirdly swole model of smiling ignorance has made a behavior of seeping into the actual world towards my will. In “The Unbreakable Boy,” which relies on the true story of an Oklahoma child whose autism prognosis was compounded by the Osteogenesis imperfecta (or “brittle bone illness”) that he inherited from his mom, Levi’s display screen persona gloms onto a household’s lived expertise with the inextricability of an alien symbiote.
The movie could not supply any particular theories as to why its title character was born with sure variations, however clunky screenwriting isn’t the one factor that makes it arduous to swallow his father’s climactic epiphany that his son “didn’t want me to repair him” a lot as “I wanted him to repair me.” Sorry, however having an autistic child can’t be a present from God and a curse from Pfizer — it’s a must to decide one or the opposite.
The excellent news is that almost all viewers in all probability received’t want “The Unbreakable Boy” to persuade them of the higher alternative between these two choices. The unhealthy information is that the movie does such a poor job of presenting its case that it couldn’t even get by to its personal star, who shot the undertaking within the fall of 2020 and has spent the final 4 years preaching his religion in pseudoscience.
Absent the occasional grace that writer-director Jon Gunn was capable of weave into his earlier movie (2024’s “Unusual Angels,” which he truly made a number of years after this one), “The Unbreakable Boy” kicks off with a false word that solely hits flatter each time it’s performed, as Austin’s (Jacob Laval) violently cute narration involves underscore the diploma to which his character is absent from the on-screen drama.
From the opening flashforward, wherein Austin’s father Scott (Levi) is a drunken mess at a Christmas social gathering along with his two sons in tow (Gavin Warren performs Austin’s neurotypical little brother Logan), it’s clear that Gunn’s script will solely see Austin as a lens by which to focus his father’s religious disaster. The child’s bones is perhaps weak, however they belie the internal power that Scott has all the time in some way lacked inside himself — though his shoulder muscle mass are massive sufficient to hold any cross on Earth.
The extra we be taught concerning the specifics of Austin’s situation, the extra they really feel like a element of his dad and mom’ circumstances. Following its prologue, “The Unbreakable Boy” rewinds the clock to stroll us by the story of how a hulking medical provide salesman wooed a video game-obsessed clothes retailer clerk named Teresa (a wildly overqualified Meghann Fahy), solely to impregnate her on their third date. In a movie so rooted in social puritanism, that growth can’t assist however really feel like divine punishment for not ready till marriage — a learn that’s solely considerably sophisticated by the reveal that Teresa has been married twice earlier than. Abortion is clearly out of the query, nevertheless it’s unusual that Teresa, whose delicate Osteogenesis imperfecta solely makes her eyes extra lovely, cries on the considered her little one inheriting a genetic dysfunction that she neglects to check Austin for as soon as he’s truly born.
It isn’t till a number of years later that Scott and Teresa uncover the fragility of their son’s physique, and there isn’t a mother or father alive who wouldn’t really feel for the agonies that poor Austin and his dad and mom are made to endure. Whereas the Kingdom Story Firm ethos prevents “The Unbreakable Boy” from dwelling on the heartache of Austin’s fixed accidents (gentle music and speedy montages are used to pave over something too painful for God’s plan to offset), the character of Austin’s situation forces the movie to incorporate a small handful of genuinely tough moments, significantly when Austin grows older and begins to require extra particular care than his college would possibly be capable of present.
As in most of at present’s “faith-based” movies, nevertheless (nearly all of that are likewise based mostly on true tales), the specifics of such hardships are considerably much less vital than how they lead the folks affected by them to the altar of God’s love. We word that Austin has an affinity for sporting jester hats, that he’s bullied at college, and that his energetic creativeness apparently conjures up him to memorize sure monologues from “A Few Good Males,” however the character is basically sanded right down to a toothy smile and a nagging sense that his dad all the time feels “shut and much away on the identical time, like though I’m proper there he doesn’t actually see me.” He would possibly as properly be describing the movie itself.
Nuance is anathema to a type of storytelling that sees religion as the reply to all of life’s obstacles, simply as fashion has no place in a film that hopes to bypass the eyes and go straight on your coronary heart, and so “The Unbreakable Boy” quickly falls into the identical acquainted rhythm as so many different motion pictures prefer it: Pleasure is adopted by hardship, hardship is adopted by a imprecise trace of the ineffable, and the ineffable provides technique to extra hardship till the protagonist is prepared to call the supply of that surprise.
If one scene finds Austin and Teresa dancing of their front room (mom and son taking pleasure in one of many solely bodily actions their our bodies will permit them to carry out safely), the subsequent will invariably see Teresa sitting on the kitchen desk and shaking her head at hospital payments underneath a blanket of unhappy piano music. The one after that? Possibly Scott crossing paths with a glinty-eyed stranger within the lavatory at church (producer Peter Facinelli), or having a heart-to-heart with the imaginary greatest pal he’s had since childhood (a gregariously charming Drew Powell). “My dad is like Tyler Durden in ‘Struggle Membership’!,” Austin’s narration declares. “I flippin’ love that film!”
For sure, nothing that occurs in “Struggle Membership” is even half as implausible as the concept that the dad and mom in a Kingdom Story Firm movie would ever let their pre-teen son watch “Struggle Membership.”
A beneficiant interpretation would possibly argue that “The Unbreakable Boy” spins in circles as an expression of Scott’s damaged ethical compass, however the film by no means bothers to articulate the ambitions he was so pissed to placed on ice after Austin was born. He wished to maneuver to New York, I suppose? We’d like a bit of greater than that to understand why Scott is such an unhappy father for the primary 12 years of his son’s life, or to understand what he may need been doing if Austin hadn’t required a lot additional care, and the empty have an effect on of Levi’s efficiency solely provides to the sense that he’s ambiguously ungrateful for the household he’s created.
That, in and of itself, is a relatable phenomenon (elevating children is never straightforward sufficient to understand how fulfilling it’s), nevertheless it’s not an entire lot to construct a film round, particularly on the expense of an autistic child with brittle bone illness and an Xbox-addicted mother who’s pressured to take care of an alcoholic husband along with her personal guilt about passing her genetic baggage alongside to their first little one. However retaining the issues imprecise permits a film like this to maintain their options imprecise as properly, just for the vagueness of each to be comically offset by the emotional skywriting of Levi’s efficiency, which finds the actor stretching each emotion throughout his total face till they’re all as clear because the scene the place Scott’s mom (Patricia Heaton) intentionally shatters a teacup in order that he can piece it again collectively throughout the montage that covers his stint in AA.
Within the summary, there’s no denying that “The Unbreakable Boy” is a candy and well-meaning schmaltz a few household who finds its biggest power within the very struggles that threaten to tear it aside — and in addition in Jesus Christ, after all, whose affect is relegated to the briefest of name-checks throughout the closing moments. However the power this movie exists to rejoice is immediately contradicted by the weaknesses of its storytelling.
“The Unbreakable Boy” could not pose the identical risk as a chunk of leisure that its main man does as a public determine, nevertheless it equally expresses no actual curiosity in — or understanding of — what autism is, and there’s no level in making an attempt to separate the artwork from the artist within the context of a film that solely ever sees itself as a way to an finish.
Grade: D+
Lionsgate will launch “The Unbreakable Boy” in theaters on Friday, February 21.
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