Dylan Matthews asks if Adam is good for the Aspies:
Were it not for its titular character’s Asperger’s Syndrome, Adam would be an unremarkable, color-by-numbers romantic comedy, with a couple who meet serendipitously, fall in love, encounter some obstacle, and try to miraculously overcome it. But whether it is a good movie is somewhat beside the point. By placing Adam (Hugh Dancy) on the autism spectrum, writer-director Max Mayer ensured that the film would be not a 90-minute dose of light escapism but a heavily didactic exercise. Adam is less interested in entertaining than in showing neurotypicals that Aspies are people, too.
In certain respects, Adam fulfills that mission. Mayer captures the lived experience of Asperger’s in great detail and with great care. A previously ignorant viewer will leave the theater with a working knowledge of the syndrome’s symptoms and at least some empathy for the experiences of those of us who have it. Yet that same viewer would also conclude that, like Adam, Asperger’s people have their charms but cannot function in normal adult relationships. In one scene, Beth (Rose Byrne), Adam’s love interest, asks the headmaster of the elementary school where she teaches if people with Asperger’s are “dating material.” The film’s answer appears to be “no.”
