ADAM - A Romance with Asperger's

Saw ADAM last night, a quirky romance about a woman who falls for her neighbor with Asperger's. Probably wouldn't have seen it if the girlfriend didn't offer to treat me to a movie.

AN ASS-FULL OF SPOILERS BELOW

ADAM hit upon a unique premise. I can't recall a love story between a "normal" woman and someone suffering from Asperger's (basically a high-functioning form of autism where the sufferer has problems reading facial cues, knowing what people are thinking, and the inability to pick up on sarcasm, innuendo, irony, or any situation in which words have a connotation as well as a denotation).

It tells the story of Adam, a single electronics engineer with a fascination for space. Adam's father just died; his dad took care of him and helped ease his transition into the world. Without him, Adam's got some problems. His new neighbor Beth seems intrigued by Adam, but a little put off by Adam's rudeness. Eventually, she realizes he has Asperger's. The two date after Adam engages in a couple of romantic gestures -- dangling outside her window in a spacesuit to clean it and showing her a family of raccoons who took up residence inside Central Park. Beth's father faces a trial for some accounting irregularities at his business. And Adam, with his lack of social skills, grills him about possibly going to jail. When Adam gets a job offer in a new town and wants to move away with Beth, Beth's dad (now about to go to jail) tells Adam Beth can do better. Eventually, the two split and Adam makes the move on his own.

Despite some good performances and a realistic script that makes the action and characters feel believable, there are several problems with the film.

First, in any kind of romance-based movie, be it an action film, a drama, or a romantic comedy, if you don't buy that the romance is important, the movie doesn't work. It never seemed believable that gorgeous, rich, smart Beth (Rose Byrne) would date a high-functioning autistic. The film sets up that she went out with a rich asshole who cheated on her and so she's looking for something different. But isn't there a middle ground between rich asshole and almost-RAIN MAN?

The romantic gestures don't offer enough explanation for why Beth goes out with Adam either. She mentions she can't see outside her windows, so he dresses up in his space suit and dangles outside her windows to clean them. Or attempts to. Instead, startling her. Because this was random and ineffectual, it doesn't feel like a big deal or that impressive. In fact, he almost kills herself and doesn't even manage to clean the windows. This could have been remedied with a bit of dialogue about how her last boyfriend (the rich asshole) never listened to her or what she wanted. When she said she wanted tickets to a concert, he even got the wrong tickets. That's when she knew the relationship wouldn't work, long before the cheating. Then, Adam cleans her windows based on an off-handed comment she makes and she's smitten.

Since we don't buy these two would ever date, we don't really care that they break up eventually. That's a major problem, removing the stakes from the movie entirely.

Film also tries to set up Beth's father as a jerk. He tells her she can do better than Adam. But he happens to be right. Adam's not that great. He's nice when he's not freaking out and he knows a lot about space. But he can't hold a normal conversation or interact with her friends and family properly. And he tends to freak out in full-0n child tantrum mode. What's more, since Beth actually doesn't end up with Adam, her father is proven right in the world of the film. Also, this whole dynamic -- overbearing father who's in legal trouble and eventually goes to jail doesn't like her underachieving boyfriend -- seems ripped from SAY ANYTHING.

Finally, the film makes a really odd choice in having Adam go to California by himself for a new job. While there, he suddenly becomes non-autistic -- or way less so. Script shows Adam at the beginning and throughout not picking up on verbal cues (sarcasm about continuing to carry heavy bags by himself) and having severe social anxiety where he won't go out with work friends and fears going out with Beth's. But for some reason, when he gets to Cali, he's noticing a co-worker's face while carrying heavy boxes and he offers to help and he's suddenly going out to bars with his co-workers. This would be fine if this was a normal character arc -- a guy goes from awkward to socially integrated. But it's Asperger's syndrome. Not a character weakness that gets worked out through the plot of the film. The reason Adam has those problems is because his brain is wired differently. It's not like he has one relationship and all of a sudden he stops being a high-functioning autistic. That'd be like a dude with paraplegia moving cross-country after a failed relationship and suddenly starting to walk.