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Nominate-best-2010

Review: Adam

Sensitive and subtle
By PETER KEOUGH  |  August 6, 2009
2.5 2.5 Stars

As opposed to what happens in most films about mentally challenged characters, the protagonist of Max Mayer's debut feature does not regress into a stereotype. Instead, he shows by contrast how stereotyped all the other characters are.

Hugh Dancy is sensitive and subtle in depicting the effects of Asperger Syndrome — a milder form of autism that limits one's ability to interact with people. Adam is obsessed with space and engineering, and after his father dies, he's left alone in his own little world — actually, it's a solar system that he's re-created in his Manhattan apartment.

New neighbor Beth (Rose Byrne) responds to Adam's innocence, but his fall, and the movie's, develops from his entanglement in her trite family melodrama, which involves a wayward dad (Peter Gallagher). Adam doesn't go in for tidy resolutions, but the unintended moral is that gazing at the stars sure beats empathizing with tiresome people.

Related: Review: Orphan, Review: The Black Balloon, The Big Hurt: Season's beatings, More more >
  Topics: Reviews , Health and Fitness, Medicine, Hugh Dancy,  More more >
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ARTICLES BY PETER KEOUGH
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  •   REVIEW: EDGE OF DARKNESS  |  February 05, 2010
    A new genre is emerging in which aging A-list actors play fathers off on a rampage to rescue their daughters or avenge their deaths.
  •   REVIEW: FROZEN  |  February 03, 2010
    A storm is coming, the girl has to pee, and then things get much worse.
  •   KAREN SCHMEER: 1970-2010  |  February 02, 2010
    Karen Schmeer, the brilliant local film editor whose work on Errol Morris's documentary The Fog of War helped win it the Best Documentary Oscar in 2004, died January 29 in a tragic accident, struck by a getaway car as she was crossing a street in Manhattan. She would have turned 40 on February 20.
  •   IS THERE 'HOPE' IN HOLLYWOOD?  |  January 29, 2010
    Buoyed by President Barack Obama's campaign slogan, many had hopes for change after his election.
  •   REVIEW: WAITING FOR ARMAGEDDON  |  January 27, 2010
    Much scarier than 2012 is this documentary about the death grip that fundamentalist religious groups have on American politics.

 See all articles by: PETER KEOUGH

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