By Sandra Hall
Ezra
(M) 101 minutes
★★★½
Ezra is a nine year-old boy with autism who is highly intelligent and articulate, has a violent hatred of bananas and an aversion to being hugged.
His parents, Jenna and Max, adore him but can’t agree on the right school for him or the best way to handle his outbursts. Played by Rose Byrne and Bobby Cannavale, who are married in real life, they present a neat study in contrasts.
He’s a bundle of conflicting emotions, she believes in reason and moderation. Byrne is a gifted comic because you can always detect a cautious streak underlying the wackiness. But this time round she’s all caution, playing straight woman to Cannavale’s mercurial moves between boisterous humour and tearful desperation.
Max (Bobby Cannavale) takes Ezra, played by William Fitzgerald, on a road trip.Credit: John Baer
Max is a former comedy writer who has decided to take his chances as a stand-up comedian. Since he and Jenna have broken up, he lives with his father, Stan (Robert De Niro) and their acerbic exchanges are among the film’s highlights. Stan, who was once a successful chef, is one of the subtler additions to De Niro’s burgeoning gallery of grumpy old men. His notorious irascibility comes with a measure of self-knowledge that proves useful when he’s dealing with his son’s impetuousness.
The film was written by Tony Spiridakis, a Hollywood veteran inspired by his experiences with his own autistic son and the marriage break-up that occurred during the boy’s adolescence. It’s directed by Tony Goldwyn, who also plays Jenna’s boyfriend, Bruce, a hard-headed lawyer she may well regard as an antidote to life with Max.
Things reach a climax when Ezra is sent to a special-needs school, where he’s miserable. Max’s solution is to kidnap him from Jenna’s house and take him on a road trip. Designed as a father-son bonding expedition, this turns into a manhunt after Jenna is reluctantly persuaded to tell the police.
It sounds like a cliché and some of the time, it plays out like one. Max’s protests become tediously repetitious but the trip’s saving grace is his relationship with Ezra, played by William Fitzgerald, who is autistic, with a fragility offset by a bracing dose of mature commonsense.
Max likes to take him along to his comedy gigs, seeing him as a sort of talisman, and just as you’re wondering if he’s motivated by concern for his son’s welfare or his own, Ezra voices the same thought. “I’m not your mojo. I’m not your buddy. I’m your son,” he says in what turns out to be the most effective line in the film.
It crystallises the script’s success in keeping earnestness or sentimentality at bay. De Niro helps, doing a lot to set the straightforward, unsentimental tone for which Goldwyn is aiming by refusing to talk down to Ezra. Their conversations are infused with an easy confidentiality that makes them sound like equals discussing the frailties of less rational adults. It’s an engaging touch.
Ezra is in cinemas on Thursday.
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