Ezra, 2024.

Directed by Tony Goldwyn.
Starring Bobby Cannavale, William A. Fitzgerald, Robert De Niro, Rose Byrne, Vera Farmiga, Whoopi Goldberg, Rainn Wilson, Tony Goldwyn, Jackson Frazer, Greer Barnes, Tess Goldwyn, Ella Ayberk, Lois Robbins, Alex Plank, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Matilda Lawler, Joe Pacheco, Amy Sheehan, Barzin Akhavan, Donna Vivino, Jacqueline Nwabueze, John Donovan Wilson, Joshua Hinck, Sophie Mulligan, Thomas Duverné, Guillermo Rodriguez, and Jimmy Kimmel.

SYNOPSIS:

Comedian Max co-parents autistic son Ezra with ex-wife Jenna. Faced with crucial decisions about Ezra’s future, Max and Ezra go on a life-changing cross-country road trip.

Undeniably made with good intentions, Ezra wants to tell a story about a young autistic boy and his father struggling to accept that uniqueness (lamenting that his son will never be “normal”) due to some personal baggage related to his rocky upbringing. Ezra is also a film that consistently gets sidetracked or finds itself telling that story in a broad, mawkish manner with outlandish plot beats that continuously sink the few elements that work. That’s also surprising considering screenwriter Tony Spiridakis (who had been working on the script for roughly 15 years) is basing that father-son relationship on his experience raising an autistic child. Why turn such personal material into… this?

A film about the challenges of parenting an autistic child and ensuring that everything from school to public behavior is going well has enough realistic, stressful drama to be relatable to anyone who has ever been in a similar situation. The dynamic that parents Max (Bobby Cannavale) and Jenna (Rose Byrne) are divorced (the actors are married with children in real life) adds another layer of domestic intrigue.

Directed by Tony Goldwyn, the film seems to have no awareness of when to stop manufacturing more drama or when it begins to feel like piling on for the sake of telling a story that quickly begins to feel false. It becomes less of an earnest look at autistic childhood and more of a far-fetched road trip flick where the logic for certain characters is nonexistent, and the narrative rapidly transitions to do something that could only exist in the movies, something that is counterproductive to why this film was made.

This is frustrating since there are touching flourishes whenever Max interacts with the titular Ezra (William A. Fitzgerald, a delight to watch and autistic). Despite getting expelled from school, Ezra is a kind soul with various stimulation triggers (such as hugs or sensitivity to eating with forks), who often speaks in famous quotes and takes everything literally to such a degree that when he overhears Jenna’s new partner jokingly talking about murdering Max, he frantically runs out of the house to warn his loving father. This leads to Ezra making the choice to run into the middle of the street while scared and avoiding a barking dog on the sidewalk, nearly getting hit by a car, with doctors under the impression that it was a suicide attempt, dealing with the incident by forcing the parents to put the boy into a special needs school and take antipsychotic medication.

That’s only the beginning of this exaggerated story, which then sees Max kidnapping his son from Jenna, believing that she has lost hope in fighting for his rights and is too comfortable listening to professional advice. He doesn’t like that the medication zombifies his son (understandably so) and appears to believe that allowing the boy to go to a special needs school means he is accepting that there is something wrong. Many of his hangups with accepting his son’s autism come from a tumultuous relationship with his father, Stan (Robert De Niro), a former chef who gave up his dreams to provide for Max after his mother left. This grandfather also has trouble acknowledging his grandson’s autism, uncomfortable uttering the term. Both of these men, in a sense, are hiding and running from reality.

Perhaps a more skilled filmmaking team could make something out of that, but Ezra also has to contend with baffling subplots such as Max’s aspiring standup comedian career and his relative closeness to securing a spot performing for Jimmy Kimmel. There is also a road trip aspect that sees Max heading West with Ezra, coming across several old friends for the sake of convenience. In one sequence, the film makes the case that there will be kids (even girls) who accept Ezra and those who will bully him, doing so in a confused way, unsure if it wants to sanitize itself. It’s also accompanied by sappy music.

At a certain point, Ezra is officially reported as kidnapped with warnings and notices throughout the 24-hour news cycle. Max is aware of this, yet confoundingly still thinks showing up to audition for Jimmy Kimmel will end well. The occasional tender moments between father and son are continuously undercut by this stupidity and overblown narrative decisions. At least it follows suit, ending in a fittingly melodramatic cringe.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com

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“We’re galaxies that lighten the dark stage”

Using music as a plot device, first-time director Choi Jung-han puts dreams and friendships under the scanner in his debut work “Galaxies”.

Eun-soo, Eun-ha and Dong-eun are three friends who form the band Eun-Ha-Soo, literally “Galaxies”. Eun-soo and Eun-ha are a couple who ran away from a music production company to showcase their individuality but, not least because of their age and said individuality, labels find them highly unmarketable and the three struggle to make ends meet. When Dong-eun, who is known to chronically invest in bad stock, takes and invests the band’s savings, loses it all and runs away, the angry Eun-soo and Eun-ha, who had let him stay in their apartment when he fell behind on rent, take an old guitar of Dong-eun’s and sell it on a marketplace. However, when Dong-eun returns with the money, they must trace back the guitar, which holds a lot of sentimental value to Dong-eun, and reunite him with it. 

Through the story of these three middle-aged friends, Choi Jung-han, who co-wrote the script with Ha Won-joon, partly takes a look at the nature of one’s dreams and the price one has to pay to achieve them. The three are adamant on keeping their originality and identity, such as it may be, even if it comes with a lack of success and financial hardship. Choi, however, keeps things fairly positive and light despite the circumstances, using comedy for this effect. The comedy doesn’t always land though, with a lot of gags just proving a little inadequate for the occasion. The payoff of the irritable bowel syndrome running gag, however, is effective. 

The second half of the feature is dedicated to the trio’s efforts to reclaim the sold guitar and the writing falters a bit here. While their adventures are interesting and often funny in their setup, some key elements are forgotten or disregarded along the way, like Dong-eun taking advance pay from his new job and never returning to it, for example. In addition to the adventures they have to go through to find their guitar, the internal journeys that the three have to go to find themselves as they meet all the various characters on their way to the guitar and, by extension, find their music as well is an interesting element of the story and one that works the most. The feature is in fact at its best when it is about the trio’s music. 

Choi manages to enlist a trio of dependable character actors to play his lead bandmates. Yoon Je-moon, probably the most well known of the three, is always a joy to watch and “Galaxies” is no different. An actor who’s known to do both comedy and even villainous roles convincingly, he gets ample scope to shine here, as Dong-eun has one of the better internal journeys of the three, which Yoon portrays impressively. Kim Ji-hoon, who mostly does bit-part roles but is probably best known for playing Helsinki in Netflix’s “Money Heist: Korea – Joint Security Area”, is fun to watch as Eun-ha, and is called upon the most to provide comedy to the proceedings. Lee Shi-ah, meanwhile, may best best known to K-Drama viewers but is adorable as Eun-soo. The matriarch of the group, her outbursts in her own cute way are hilarious.

Despite being a story about music and musicians, the music in “Galaxies” is somewhat of a letdown. The background score is appropriate, but none of the songs manage to register as impressive, or even hummable. The ones in the beginning of the film are understandably so, as the story demands it, but the couple of songs that appear later on do not leave much of an impression. The bright cinematography, on the other hand, does impress, with the images being vivid and immersive throughout.

Ultimately, as far as low-budget productions go, “Galaxies” is a perfectly cute film and a breezy time as a whole, but it is not without its faults, particularly in the writing department, which do bring the overall enjoyment of it down and are complicit in the feature failing to leave a lasting impression.