Rating: R | Runtime: 101 minutes
Release Date: May 31st, 2024 (USA)
Studio: Bleecker Street Media
Director(s): Tony Goldwyn
Writer(s): Tony Spiridakis

That kid is the one thing I can’t get wrong.

Friends for four decades, director Tony Goldwyn and screenwriter Tony Spiridakis join forces to bring the latter’s inspired-by-life experience being the father of an autistic child to theaters. So, despite the title being Ezra, this is really Ezra’s (neurodivergent actor William A. Fitzgerald) father Max’s (Bobby Cannavale) story. Max is at a crossroads (not yet signing the divorce papers filed by Rose Byrne’s Jenna and on the cusp of a potential big break as a comedian) and his sole constant is his son. As a result, everything that’s happening in Ezra’s life is forcing him to overcompensate through fear under the guise of love. Max thinks he’s fighting for his boy when he’s really just hiding from his own problems.

It leads him to kidnap Ezra from his mother’s house in the middle of the night in a bid to “save” him from what he sees as an opportunistic cabal of “normal” society. They want to put Ezra in a specialized school and give him medication. Max wants to assume such acts are a means to force his son into conformity and refuses to even consider the possibility that both outcomes might actually help give him the tools to better be himself instead. Thus begins an ill-conceived road trip from New Jersey to a spot on Jimmy Kimmel’s show in Hollywood with his father (Robert De Niro’s Stan) and Jenna on their tail … and the police looming large once this ordeal becomes a welfare issue.

The journey leads Max towards a couple old friends (Rainn Wilson’s Nick and Vera Farmiga’s Grace) who know and love him enough to be able to help while also telling him he’s out of his mind. This whole script is pretty much people trying to get Max to understand that his heart being in the right place doesn’t mean what he’s done is justified, but they all know that he’ll only be able to come to that realization after the consequences arrive. Because he’s blinded by what he believes to be the duty of a parent—something he hasn’t had many good examples of to truly know whether he’s correct. Max is acting on impulse, throwing himself and Ezra into an uncontrollable session of exposure therapy on the run.

That’s where things get a little shaky insofar as Max doing exactly what he doesn’t want anyone else to do: propping Ezra up as “special” when it suits his needs and forcing the boy to do and try things that make his own life easier. Half the time it feels like it’s done to show us how Max has a lot to learn about himself and his own shortcomings, but the other half presents it as evidence that random events can cure what ails you if your life was a Hollywood movie. But nuance isn’t what drives honest feel-good stories like this. Ezra isn’t made as much to educate people on autism as it is to entertain audiences with more wins than losses. So, while what occurs on-screen is authentic, it can also seem too easy.

I think it works more than not, though. And the acting is great with Cannavale and Fitzgerald finding a wonderful rapport for both the highs and lows inherent to the relationship depicted. Byrne and Wilson are memorable supporting players with De Niro proving the scene-stealer on a couple of occasions to add some pathos to his otherwise curmudgeon straight man for comedy. This is a piece about fathers and sons in the end and the struggle between Max and Stan is as real as the one between Max and Ezra. Neither will ever be perfect, but they can come close if they’re willing to look inwards and recognize when their actions are truly for the other and when they’re just being used to shield themselves from blame.

---

Robert De Niro, Bobby Cannavale and William A. Fitzgerald in EZRA; courtesy of Bleecker Street.