'Adam' review

Rose Byrne and Hugh Dancy (Credit: Julia Griner/Fox Searchlight)

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Beth (Rose Byrne) becomes smitten with her new neighbor Adam (Hugh Dancy), who's sweet but socially awkward and easily flustered, with a tendency to ramble. After he tells her that he has Asperger's syndrome—a developmental disability on the autism spectrum—Beth seeks to learn more while beginning a relationship with Adam. She also hopes he can impress her father (Peter Gallagher), an accountant who's got his hands full with an indictment and pending trial.

The buzz: There aren't many movies—much less romantic comedies--about people with developmental disabilities, and those that do exist tend to be sweeping, awards-baiting stuff like Sean Penn's Oscar-nominated "I Am Sam." (See "Tropic Thunder" for a more crass assessment of this phenomenon.) Perhaps "Adam," by using less recognizable actors to explore a condition with fewer visible physical indicators, can approach this material with the right dose of sensitivity and realism.

The verdict: Imposing music can ruin a quiet scene, and the bursts of strings in "Adam" need to borrow some of the subtlety found elsewhere in the film. Writer-director Max Mayer also doesn't know what to do with Beth's parents, whose rejection of Adam as a romantic possibility for their daughter feels canned. Yet this is a drama with refreshing specificity. Dancy and Byrne, playing off each other nicely, demonstrate what it's like to live with a disability and what it's like to want to help someone who does. Moving and funny in just the right places, "Adam" becomes an honest but non-patronizing search for understanding, and the universal need to love someone in spite of their imperfections.

Did you know? Adam, who after he's fired hangs out near the elementary school where Beth works, learns that when a cop asks what you're doing looking through that fence, "Watching the children" is not a good answer.

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