The Peanut Butter Falcon, 2019
A young man with Down Syndrome, Zak, escapes from the retirement home where he's being kept, making a run for a wrestling school run by a larger-than-life personality called the Salt Water Redneck. At the same time an unsettled fisherman named Tyler rouses the ire of several men when he pulls from their crab traps. After a mild act of vandalism on Tyler's part goes wrong, he ends up on the run with Zak. The two of them are pursued by Eleanor, the woman in charge of Zak who has been tasked with returning him to the nursing home.
This movie, above all, is full of heart and compassion for its various characters. Featuring a character with a disability is a tricky thing. There's the trap of over-sentimentalizing the character (making them a wise saint) and the opposing trap of feeling like you are mocking the character. The movie was supposedly written specifically with the actor who plays Zak in mind, and the script is tailored to his interests. This allows for a very natural flow to the film, and an authenticity of the character.
Zack Gottsagen and Shia LaBeouf have really excellent chemistry. I know that LaBeouf has had his various struggles over the years, but I've been pretty impressed by everything I've seen him in (including his work in the Elastic Heart music video). He has an incredibly natural rapport with Gottsagen that reduces the gap between "experienced actor" and "first timer". LeBeouf does some heavy lifting with an almost entirely internal subplot about the death of his character's older brother and the guilt that Tyler carries. Bonding with Zak brings out a lot of emotions in Tyler, both positive and painful. It's a really powerful performance.
The supporting cast is pretty excellent. Thomas Hayden Church as Salt Water Redneck; Jon Berenthal as Tyler's older brother; Dakota Johnson as Eleanor; Bruce Dern as Zak's nursing home roommate; and John Hawkes as one of the men pursuing Tyler.
My only real complaint was what I felt was a lack of development in Eleanor's character. She's the only main female character (heck, or secondary character), and she's written as incredibly reactive. The film has a great conversation between Eleanor and Tyler about the way that she treats Zak. Despite her good intentions, she infantilizes him, and Tyler rightfully points out that this behavior hurts Zak just as much as some of the slurs and cruelty he encounters. But after this speech about giving Zak more autonomy, her character doesn't change much. And she doesn't . . . do much. She was already pretty ineffectual, and her being convinced one way or the other doesn't change her impact on the plot. It feels like she's there to be the love interest, and it's to Dakota Johnson's credit that the character feels dimensional. It doesn't quite seem right that there's never a real conversation between Eleanor and Zak.
This movie put a huge smile on my face and on the faces of the people I watched it with. We all work with young people or young adults with severe disabilities, and this was an affectionate and natural portrayal of the wonderful relationships that you can form if you aren't biased by assumptions about what someone can do or feel. A real pick-me-up with an endearing optimism at its core.
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