Imagine having a bright, sharp mind and many things to say, but your only means of communication is pointing at a limited array of words and images on a laminated sheet. You might go, well, the title of this movie. Out of My Mind (now streaming on Disney+) is the story of a sixth grader whose cerebral palsy has rendered her unable to speak or get around without a motorized wheelchair. The film is based on the bestselling novel of the same name by Sharon M. Draper, and it stars first-timer Phoebe-Rae Taylor, whose A+ performance upholds assertions that real-life people with disabilities are the ideal when it comes to dramatizing the joys and struggles of fictional people with disabilities.
The Gist: Melody Brooks (Taylor) has a pet goldfish named Ollie, and he keeps jumping out of his tank. She gets it. Maybe Ollie feels trapped. Maybe Ollie is frustrated by his limitations. Maybe Ollie working too hard to overcome his problems would be… bad. Painful. Fatal? And in the opening scene, out he goes, and Melody freaks out. As she should – she can’t save him, and can’t yell for help. Her dad Chuck (Luke Kirby) is outside, and her mom Diane (Rosemarie DeWitt) and little sister Penny (Emily Mitchell) are gone. Melody tries to splash water on her poor fish, and ends up knocking over the tank. Chuck comes in and takes care of him and now, by the time he loads her and her wheelchair into the van, Melody’s late for school. The special-ed school. The special-ed school that’s not in the “regular” school but next to it, in a trailer. You know how it goes. Please, sigh about it, long and deep. It deserves a long, deep sigh.
We get to hear Melody’s inner voice, and it belongs to Jennifer Aniston, who knows she’s doing a voiceover for this girl, because she comes right out and tells us. Melody loves Friends, and her story is set during the time when the show still aired new episodes that we watched on tube TVs. None of this, not even Jennifer Aniston’s meta-self-awareness, is distracting, so don’t worry. Melody is too effortlessly engaging for our attention to divert elsewhere. Via Jennifer Aniston, she explains that she has cerebral palsy. We also quite quickly understand the dynamic here: Her inner Jennifer Aniston voice is far more articulate than her ability to communicate with people outside her head. That involves pointing at a grid of words and symbols portraying the most basic expressions. Imagine being able to communicate via the vast expanse of the English language, but being limited to a couple hundred words. How frustrating!
And because of this conundrum, everyone around Melody has gotten used to not listening to her, or even worse, talking about her like she’s not right there in the room with them. Even her parents do it. Diane is overprotective, understandably. But Chuck thinks Melody should be free to take risks and learn from them like anyone does, even if it requires him to jump in and defend her while she sits by, mortified by the attention. Then an angel walks into Melody’s class: Dr. Katherine Post (Courtney Taylor, no relation), a forward-thinking educator who wants to put kids like Melody into mainstream classrooms – just one day a week to start. Melody is delighted. Diane doesn’t like it. Chuck fights for it. And it happens.
It’s not an easy transition, but Melody’s up for it. Trust me when I say that. No – trust her when she shows you. The principal (Catherine McNally) isn’t fond of this idea, seeing it as a complication and a drain on resources. The teacher (Michael Chernus) finds it’s easier to just let her sit in the back of the room and mostly pretend she’s not there. The other kids – well, they’re either indifferent or cruelly dismissive, but one, Rose (Maria Nash) is cautiously, awkwardly receptive even if you sometimes get the sense that she’s just being nice for its own sake. But Melody is smart enough to be patient with people who just don’t know or understand her in all her brightness. Melody wonders if she’ll ever kiss a boy, or be able to find a pair of orthopedic shoes that aren’t dorky – cue sweetheart busybody neighbor Mrs. V (Judith Light) with the bedazzler. Melody sees a film with Stephen Hawking, and next thing you know, Mom and Dad are muscling the insurance company to pay (an asinine amount, of course) for a computerized device that will actually speak entire sentences for her. Life has just gotten easier for Melody! It’s also gotten harder. But you know what? That’s a good thing. A marvelous thing, actually.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Out of My Mind is one of the better teen coming-of-age films in recent years, up there with Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, and in the same ballpark as heavier hitters Eighth Grade and The Edge of Seventeen.
Performance Worth Watching: Dare you to sit back and watch Taylor’s performance and not be enamored by Melody’s bright inner spark.
Memorable Dialogue: Mrs. V gives Melody an absolutely indispensable piece of advice: “At some point you better learn, just because someone wipes your ass, doesn’t mean you have to kiss theirs.” HELL YEAH MRS. V. YOU CAN BARGE IN AND CRITICIZE OUR CHOICE OF DISH DETERGENT WHENEVER YOU WANT!
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: Out of My Mind is an ideal example of the clean-as-a-whistle family-friendly coming-of-age drama with a comedy fringe. It’s feathery on the surface but substantial beneath, and it overcomes a somewhat boilerplate screenplay – the plot hinges on a trivia-quiz competition that gives Melody a rather convenient means of sharing her mind with everyone – with superbly modulated small moments. When she first speaks with relative eloquence via the computer, you can’t help but weep along with Chuck. When she breaks through to Rose by chatting about boys, you can’t help but smile. When Mrs. V steps in for a pep talk – and there’s evidence she understands Melody a little better than her parents, even – you can’t help but laugh. When Melody speaks her mind to her teacher, you can’t help but cheer, and hope the guy learns something, because he’s not necessarily a bad person, but he very much resembles someone you know.
The movie is full of such whip-smart, observational, insightful moments. There are no clear-cut villains here, just a few enlightened souls, a few unenlightened souls, and many who are trapped in-between. I need to reiterate that Taylor is an absolute light at the heart of the film. I don’t know if Melody will solve world peace, and this isn’t that kind of story anyway. But the performance is so viably authentic, you find yourself imagining this fictional character’s future as a beautiful mind who makes the people around her better.
Kirby and DeWitt hit perfect notes as harried parents who seem too heavily occupied with the day-to-day to see the big picture as it relates to their special-needs daughter, and Aniston and Light are big, broad strokes used judiciously lest they wear out the movie’s welcome. The strength of the mini dramas within the larger drama helps push through a trio of requisite-for-the-genre Uplifting Montages. It’s never falsely sentimental; rather, it’s quietly earnest. It holds us in suspense until Melody finally asserts herself – or in the lengthy pause that gets heavily pregnant as she types her feelings into her device and we wait to hear what she’s thinking and feeling. And when it finally comes, it’s a direct blow to the heart.
Our Call: Out of My Mind and into your heart. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.