[yasr_overall_rating]
When David Wilson’s young wife falls victim to cancer, he is left a single working dad with the sole responsibility of caring for his sixth-grade son with autism.
It’s difficult to criticize a film with intentions as earnest as those of John Asher’s palpably are in “A Boy Called Po.” Like its protagonist, Asher is the father of an autistic boy, and he gets all the details seemingly right – the child sporadically running away from their parent, isolating themselves in imaginary worlds, being highly sensitive and overall challenging – but while those intermittent scenes may ring somewhat true, the rest of the film doesn’t. For anyone who has ever seen a “disease-of-the-week” TV drama, it’s a predictable bore to endure, altruistic intentions be damned.
Chalk it up to cheap, sappy, manipulative tactics Asher employs to string the audience along. You’ve seen it all before and done better. Five months after David’s (Christopher Gorham) wife passes away, he and his autistic son Patrick, a.k.a. Po (Julian Feder), are deeply immersed in grief, Po drawing rainbows on the wall with ketchup and mustard. At school, bullies punch Po, stuff him into lockers and call him Spaceman. Consequently, he “isolates himself more and more,” drifting into imaginary fantasy worlds. The ethereal Amelia (Caitlin Carmichael) becomes Po’s first “real” friend, with whom he escapes into a magical secret garden.
In the meantime, David faces dire financial straits, having spent most of his money on his dying wife’s medical bills. The school principal insists on special education. When a rep from the Child Protective Services, Ben (Brian George), advises David to submit Po to a Special Care facility, the torn father faces a difficult choice: listen to Ben or keep fighting for his son, possibly allowing the boy to “drift away” completely. Of course, there’s Amy (Kaitlin Doubleday), a beautiful blonde teacher, who comes into their lives to infuse the story with some romantic sparkles.
If it all sounds morbid and somewhat uninvolving, it’s because it so deeply is. With no room for levity, scenes unravel at a snail’s pace, with their outcomes seen a mile away. Here’s an example: David flies planes with Po, Po gets hurt, Child Services dude Ben arrives at the scene promptly and goes off on a prolonged spiel about how good he is at his job – which, much like the rest of this film’s dialogue, just sits there admiring itself without moving the story forward.
If “A Boy Called Po” does achieve something quite remarkable, it manages to check almost every cliché in the film book. Derivative funereal opening? Check. Hazy flashbacks to dead wife? Check. Exasperated father yelling at son to shut up, then feeling sorry right after? Check. Kind traffic cop tearing up the ticket after seeing the autistic kid? Check. A “funny” bodily humor sequence? Check (here, it involves burping). Burt Bacharach’s twinkling piano music, which sounds like it was composed as a schizoid Lifetime lullaby, grates like the moldiest cheese. As for the “Rainman” “twist” at the end, my jaw literally dropped open – it’s so casually thrown it at the last minute, it’s almost impressive in its audacity, but remains utterly ridiculous and nonsensical.
“If I was you, I’d keep my retarded kid on a leash,” the security guard, who was strangely compassionate up until this point, advises. “That way, he wouldn’t get away from you.” He receives a well-deserved punch, although whether it’s for being offensive or for not using the more proper subjunctive mood when speaking, remains to be seen. Screenwriter Colin Goldman is, after all, famous for scribbling segments of “Mickey’s Twice Upon a Christmas,” so let’s not question his literacy.
One redeeming factor of Asher’s film is Julian Feder’s titular performance. He really quite excels as the mac-and-cheese loving Po, a compassionate, sincere and lost child. Too bad the imaginary worlds to which he escapes are populated by cheaply rendered pirates, cowboys, knights, and astronauts. The kid’s intentions, unlike the director’s, actually manifested themselves in an effective performance, one that belongs in a better film than Asher’s.
In theaters Friday, September 1st
