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Playing a character who is mentally disabled can be a fast track to Oscar or to oblivion, and rare is the actor who can resist the statuette-winning, Hanks-Hoffman strategy of mannered tics and mechanical talk. And when you consider that not even Sean Penn could pull it off without making our eyeballs cringe, the performance of Hugh Dancy (pictured) in the charming romantic comedy “Adam” is all the more impressive.
As the title character, a Manhattan engineer who suffers from Asperger’s syndrome (a form of autism), Mr. Dancy is credibly eccentric yet still accessible. His pin-neat apartment, stocked with multiple macaroni-and-cheese dinners and monotonal outfits, reflects a mind drawn to symmetry and familiarity. So when the dreamy Beth (Rose Byrne, pictured) moves into his building and his life, Adam — already at an emotional and professional crossroads — is forced to develop a whole new set of coping skills.
Considering the story’s twee details — Adam’s passion is the heavens, Beth’s is teaching tiny children — and a tonally disruptive subplot concerning Beth’s parents (Peter Gallagher and Amy Irving), “Adam” is more involving than you might expect.
The humor is delicate, and the performances sweet and sure; the script (by the director, Max Mayer) is not entirely predictable, and the Manhattan locations (lovingly photographed by Seamus Tierney) have a starry-eyed glaze. What, you mean New York City isn’t a tranquil, leafy haven?
Beth Haller, Ph.D., is Co-Director of the Global Alliance for Disability in Media and Entertainment (www.gadim.org). A former print journalist, she is a member of the Advisory Board for the National Center on Disability and Journalism (https://ncdj.org/). Haller is Professor Emerita in the Department of Mass Communication at Towson University in Maryland, USA. Haller is co-editor of the 2020 "Routledge Companion to Disability and Media" (with Gerard Goggin of University of Sydney & Katie Ellis of Curtin University, Australia). She is author of "Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media" (Advocado Press, 2010) and the author/editor of Byline of Hope: Collected Newspaper and Magazine Writing of Helen Keller (Advocado Press, 2015). She has been researching disability representation in mass media for 30+ years. She is adjunct faculty in the Disability Studies programs at the City University of New York (CUNY) and the University of Texas-Arlington.
The NY Times review:
