How sunny and well-meaning and therapeutically feel-good is the new autism drama “The Unbreakable Boy?” It’s a movie in which the dad, played by Zachary Levi, has an imaginary best friend. It’s a movie in which the local church is run by a Matthew McConaughey sort of dude named Preacher Rick (Peter Facinelli), who’s so down with his downtrodden flock that he himself is a recovering alcoholic who admits he sometimes doesn’t like to go to church. And it’s a movie in which the title character, an owlish 13-year-old named Austin (Jacob Laval), isn’t merely autistic. He also suffers from osteogenesis imperfecta, which means that his bones are extraordinarily fragile, so that he’s like some teen-geek version of Mr. Glass in “Unbreakable.” Speaking to the audience in voiceover, Austin lists his bone breaks, which number in the high twenties, as if they were Pokémon cards he was collecting.
More than that, “The Unbreakable Boy” is a movie in which Austin, not in spite of his autism but because of it, is depicted as a problem child who’s actually a life force, the kind of person who draws people to him. In a certain way, he’s disconnected — living in his own world. In another way, he’s so connected to the world around him that it’s as if he’s closer to it than we are.
Jacob Laval, a gifted young actor, infuses Austin with a savant quality. Laval has curly hair, a chipmunk grin, and a voice that gurgles with enthusiasm. He plays Austin as a live wire, fulminating with reactions, plugged into information about everything (pop culture, the most minute habits of his parents). He loves sneakers, “Star Wars,” chicken nuggets, dragons, pancakes, “Back to the Future,” SpongeBob, and ranch dressing (“Ranch dressing is the bomb!”). He has a lizard named Marty (as in Marty McFly), an awesome DVD collection, and an awesome hat collection, and his “conversation” is an overstimulated monologue occasionally interrupted by others. Yet it’s not some stream-of-word-salad. He’s living inside that head of his, but his response to life is so nonstop there’s a purity to it. And that’s the lesson his parents, especially his troubled dad, have to learn.
“The Unbreakable Boy” was completed three years ago, and that means the Zachary Levi we see in this movie is closer to the brightly grinning earnest man-child who was so appealing in the first “Shazam!” film, which came out in 2019. In the years since, Levi, who‘s been quite public about his political views (on Donald Trump, COVID vaccines, etc.), has fallen between the cracks of Hollywood, but he holds down the center of “The Unbreakable Boy” in that quizzical aw-shucks way of his. The movie, based on Scott LeRette’s memoir, shows us how Scott and his wife, Teresa (Meghann Fahy), meet cute and start dating, only to find themselves pregnant way too early. That’s the first hint of the film’s message: that life is not going to turn out the way you think, so if you’re going to love your life you’d better embrace that.
As it happens, that’s the message of nearly every faith-based film I’ve seen. “The Unbreakable Boy,” produced by Kingdom Story Company (the independent studio behind such films as “I Still Believe,” “American Underdog,” “Jesus Revolution,” “White Bird,” and “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever”), has the faith-based aesthetic, which is that faith — the importance of it, the loss of it, the regaining of it — is expressed not merely in the Sunday-school arc of the story but in the PG-rated atmosphere of benevolence that coats the story like an angelic frosting.
Levi’s Scott, who travels around the country selling medical devices, is doing all he can to be a good father, but Austin is hard to be around because he’s such a chatterbox. And the toll he takes on Scott is visible, if rather civilized: After a while, we start to notice that he’s never without a glass of red wine in his hand. He’s drinking away his anxiety. And that’s what causes the breakdown of his marriage. He’s got to get kicked out, and get sober, to appreciate the life he had.
There’s a moment when Austin turns violent, throwing an object at his mother’s head, and I thought, “Good. More of an edge to the film’s portrayal of autism.” But after being placed in a psych ward, and a class for special-needs kids, Austin snaps back into the same old charming insular brainiac-saint, and that’s where “The Unbreakable Boy” takes a turn toward something more sentimental than tough. Faith-based movies would be better if their happy endings weren’t always so rosy. At one point the film teases us with the suggestion that Scott’s imaginary friend, a burly bearded drinking buddy named Joe (Drew Powell), who he hashes out his problems with, might actually be God. But that idea is dropped as quickly as it’s raised. The fact that we’re ready to believe it shows you the secret heart of faith-based movies: that they proffer a God so soothing he could be a human Teddy bear.