Ezra (#560)


After deciding that I would not see Summer Camp, Babes and I Saw the TV Glow simply because I'm trying to amend my viewing habits and the subject matter turned me off, my son and I went to see EZRA, and we both enjoyed it.  It is a heart warming, poignant and sometimes funny story about family and relationships.  Max, played exceptionally well by Bobby Cannavale, has become a dark stand-up comedian, living with his father (Robert De Niro) during s separation from his wife (Rose Byrne), and father of an autistic young son.  When the couple's arguments about what to do with their son reach an unsolvable point, Max takes son Ezra and embarks on a get-away-from-it-all trip to friends in Michigan and onward west. It serves no purpose to explain more about the trip because there are too many events to recount, but Max ends up as a fugitive of justice for kidnapping.  There are other elements to be examined such as Max's troubled relationship with his father, who went from being a reasonably successful chef to a position as a doorman in a New York City apartment building, and the memory of his mother deserting the family when he was young.  Ezra is wonderfully acted by a young man new to movies as he exhibits the many manic and otherwise bizarre behavior of an autistic child.  Overdone and dragging at times, Ezra is still a film to be seen as it delves into the problems of parents with autistic children and family relationships in general.  Critics gave it a 67% thumbs up, and audiences 94%, proving again that audiences are nicer than critics!

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