I’ll admit that I avoided this movie quite a bit and as it became increasingly clear that it was going to be this week’s Screen Unseen, I contemplated making it a Spider Monday instead, but ultimately, I figured that a dark comedy about a washed up comedian with a kid with autism might be okay to watch and it turns out it was. In a lot of ways it reminded me of C’mon C’mon in its delicacy and patience, the long procedural parenting scenes that establish Ezra’s character and relationship with his two estranged parents. Ezra is equal parts stand up comedians cameoing endlessly (Rainn Wilson!) with other famous actors like Robert De Niro, Vera Farmiga, Rose Byrne, Whoopi Goldberg, father-son roadtrip, and quirkly blended family comedy. I don’t know too much about the politics of depictions of autism and whether the ways that Ezra behaves makes him sort of more eccentric and easily incorporated into wider society in a way that might not be the experience of other families, but honestly the kid is such a fun actor and the pastiche of movie quotes and standup fragments he uses as his conversational building blocks are satisfyingly meta. The movie never makes any claims that Max (the perfectly cast, instantly lovable, caustic Bobby Cannavale) is being heroic, which makes everything he does from child abduction to towing him to standup gigs feel a lot less jarring because no one’s trying to make it make sense on an ethical level, but it does cause some issues like when he calls his father to ask for advice when he nearly hits his son during an argument–you know, the totally understandable parenting situation where you need advice on how not to physically abuse your own child. But mostly the movie is not really too interested in schmaltz or virtue and that’s definitely what saves it. If you like child actors and you are looking for a film about imperfect parenting or just a film that will update for you where your favorite New York comedians are right now, Ezra is a great place to go.
