MOVIE REVIEW
Dancy charms in sweet ‘Adam’
Dancy’s standout performance is truthful, delicate
“Adam” is a warm and sweet little romance. It doesn’t aspire to be much more than a very good Lifetime Ailment of the Week movie — heck, it doesn’t even aspire to have a better title than “Adam” — but it does a fair job of being that, and it gets an extra handful of points for being heartwarming and genuine, unlike most of what’s out there at the moment.
ADAM
Two and a half stars (Out of four)
STARRING: Hugh Dancy, Rose Byrne, Frankie Faison, Peter Gallagher and Amy Irving
DIRECTOR: Max Mayer
RUNNING TIME: 99 minutes
RATING: PG-13 for thematic material, sexual content and language.
THE LOWDOWN: An unlikely romance blossoms between a young man with Asperger’s syndrome
and his beautiful new neighbor
Adam (Hugh Dancy) is an electrical engineer and toy maker with Asperger syndrome, a condition described by a character (whose only purpose is to provide the definition) as being on the mild end of the autism spectrum. People with Asperger’s are extremely awkward socially, have trouble making eye contact or small talk, cannot read what others are thinking or feeling, and cannot understand jokes, word play or figures of speech. They are bluntly honest; dishonesty and subterfuge are beyond their comprehension.
But we don’t learn this about Adam right away. When we first meet him, he is burying his father, and then he goes home to the Manhattan apartment they shared and proceeds to move, as if by rote, through his very austere and ordered life. After he has run through all the plaid shirts and sweaters in his wardrobe, he ventures to the laundry room, where he meets Beth (Rose Byrne), the new neighbor from upstairs.
Beth, who has just ended a relationship that was bad, although it is not clear why it was bad, is a teacher and aspiring children’s book author.
Perhaps because he is so guileless and childlike, or perhaps because, hello, he looks like Hugh Dancy, Beth is intrigued by Adam and drawn to him whenever they encounter one another. Although she suspects others — her parents, most notably — will not find him prime boyfriend material, she begins to seek him out, and the two embark with trepidation on a romance that is compelling to watch unfold and is one of the highlights of the film. All romances are fraught with difficulties, but this one is fraught with more than most, at least for a woman who likes to go to parties where small talk is in order.
A side story involves Beth’s feckless father, Marty (Peter Gallagher), an accountant on trial for cooking some books. This portion of the movie lacks the feather-light touch of the rest of the film, and it serves more as an annoying distraction than as an adroit counterpoint to the film’s theme about honesty being the best policy. It should be mentioned here that Gallagher has, indeed, become a caricature of himself, manscaped eyebrows or not.
“Adam” has a warm, fuzzy visual texture, but otherwise director Max Mayer breaks little new ground. He trots out some groan-inducing cliche camera angles, and when he juxtaposes scenes of Marty standing trial with Adam practicing for a job interview, it is almost painful to watch.
That said, he scores a major coup by delivering a terrific final reel.
The real coup here, though, is scored by Dancy, for his truthful, delicate portrayal of Adam. The socially stunted character could have been played with Hoffmanesque or Hanks-like expansiveness, but instead Dancy pulls back, and the effect is uncanny.
Byrne, who, like Dancy, skillfully doffed her native accent for her role, is lovely as a character who is essentially just a foil for Dancy’s work. And Amy Irving does a nice, albeit brief, turn as Beth’s mother, a woman who has some experience loving a difficult person herself.
But then, aren’t we all difficult?•
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