As a child, Owen Susskind started becoming increasingly withdrawn and non-verbal. His parents took him to specialist after specialist and finally one diagnosed him with Autism Spectrum Disorder. The communication breakthrough occurred when the Susskind's realized they could relate to Owen through animated Disney movies. Now at 23, Owen is ready to move into a halfway house designed to gently introduce him to the overwhelmingly neurotypical world.
As an autistic adult, this was the most sanitized, coddling infantilization of neurodivergency that I have ever seen. It was fucking infuriating. Everything revolved around the parents and how tragic their struggle has been dealing with an autistic child and how brave and understanding they are for everything they've done to improve his quality of life.
Now, every single autistic person is different. Sometimes wildly so. Spectrum. And there seems like a lot this documentary is leaving out in order to focus on its feel-good message. We don't see Owen struggle, break down, lash out. We only see him awash with wonder and repeating lines from Disney classics. Good PR for Disney, bad for anyone with ASD hoping to be taken seriously. It's an incomplete portrait that has been massaged into a roughly 2-hr commercial for a megacorp. Avoid.
Nope? Want to see for yourself how bad it is? Streaming on Kanopy and the Roku channel. Don't say I didn't warn you.
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