A Trend in My Movies These Days (Part 2)

So, a few days after watching Martian Child, a friend and I decided to watch Lars and the Real Girl (for about the 50th time). Before this time we had never noticed the previews. However, this particular time, we did. In the previews there's a little movie called Music Within. Well, the preview looked amazing. So we did a little renting. On the cover were listed several awards (Audience Award AFI Dallas Int'l Film Festival '07, Star Award AFI Dallas Int'l Film Festival '07, Best of Fest--Palm Springs Int'l Film Festival '07), plus there was a nice cast including Ron Livingston, Hector Elizondo, Rebecca De Mornay, and Michael Sheen.

Here's what I think: A great true event to base a movie around. This is the story of Richard Pimentel and his fight with society and the government to stop looking at people's disabilities while ignoring everything else about them, and start accepting them for the person behind the disability (while gaining employment for the disabled, which was the bigger story of this film).

Now as touching and sappy as all that sounds, this movie was actually pretty funny for the most part. The greatest comedic relief came through the character of Art--a victim of cerebral palsy confined to a wheelchair with a genius IQ and dirty mouth--played by Michael Sheen (whom I was quite impressed with and incidently will be portraying The White Rabbit in Burton's 2010 version of Alice in Wonderland). Eventually Pimentel's work paid off and the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) was passed in 1990.

I also did a little research on director Steven Sawalich, someone I'd never heard of and for good reason. This was his directorial debut and as far as I could find has had nothing since. In an interview with MovieMaker he discusses future projects that, from what I can interpret, will not be a far stretch from this initial film. Overall I think he did a good job with the mood of the film. Nothing was overworked, and things seemed to just kind of fall into place. There was nothing extravagant or amazingly special about this film, but then again it was based on true events so it needed to remain believable.

The one downfall: Ron Livingston. While his stale and apathetic attitude/approach works for his character in Office Space, it didn't quite have the same affect in this movie (probably because there's a real passion in the real-life Richard Pimentel). It's my opinion, and I'm not the only one, that Livingston didn't quite grasp that passion that should be there. On the other hand, Michael Sheen most definitely did.

This isn't one of those movies I'm going to be buying anytime soon, but I'm glad I watched it. Now I can connect this to all those times in Education classes we discussed the ADA, and can also be on the lookout for more Michael Sheen roles to see if I can be equally impressed with him in his past and future work.

And one more thing, perhaps most enjoyable of this film: the soundtrack, which included loads of good music and one-hit wonders. The list is forever long, so just go here to take a look.

Once again, until next time, adieu good sirs.