Film Review: Director's deft touch keeps viewers rooting young lovers in 'Adam'
Winsome New York schoolteacher falls for socially inept but cute guy with a developmental disorder known as Asperger's syndrome.
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Beth (Rose Byrne) and Adam (Hugh Dancy) are a thoroughly charming couple in "Adam," which is at the Malco Ridgeway Four.
Rated PG-13 for thematic material, sexual content and language
Length: 99 minutes
Released: July 29, 2009 LimitedCast: Hugh Dancy, Rose Byrne, Peter Gallagher, Amy Irving, Frankie Faison
Director: Max MayerProducer: Leslie Urdang, Miranda De Pencier, Dean Vanech
Writer: Max Mayer
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Distributor: Fox Searchlight Pictures
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That's a premise to make one shudder, because even movies with honorable intentions have a tendency to treat "mentally challenged" individuals with condescension. But "Adam" pretty much avoids the pitfalls of tastelessness and sentimentalization that could have resulted in "Forrest Gump Falls in Love." Instead, writer-director Max Mayer has produced a fairly charming romance with an unpredictable ending. (Does the non-rousing conclusion explain why "Adam" -- a movie that should appeal to the young moviegoers who have made "(500) Days of Summer" a hit -- is opening in Memphis only at the Malco Ridgeway Four, as if it were a limited-appeal "art" film?)
Mayer -- who has directed only one previous feature, "Better Living," a forgotten 1998 dysfunctional-family comedy with Olympia Dukakis -- is helped immeasurably by his leads. Previously presented as a romantic hero in "Confessions of a Shopaholic," Hugh Dancy is Adam, a toy-company computer wizard with a fascination for astronomy. ("There are new images of Saturn from the Cassini Project," is a typical Adam rejoinder.) Rose Byrne is new neighbor Beth, an "NT" -- "neuro-typical" -- who is puzzled by Adam's oddness and social ineptitude until she learns he has a form of "high-functioning autism" known as Asperger's syndrome.
Although there are some unlikely "cute" moments (Adam dons an astronaut's uniform to dangle outside Beth's window), Adam and Beth are remarkably nice, likable characters, played by Dancy and Byrne without the tics and self-consciousness that more pretentious or perhaps less secure performers might have brought to the roles. Dancy and Byrne seem to be behaving, not acting. The viewer never stops rooting for these young lovers, even when the film drags during its final act.
Another plus: 65 minutes pass before the first mood-establishing pop song is heard on the soundtrack. Such rare (for 2009) restraint is indicative of Mayer's delicate approach.
-- John Beifuss, 529-2394
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