The Soloist Should Stay By Itself **

Rating: 4/10 (14 January 2010)

Depressing film dealing with mental illness and genius. Just another of those films that press the point about genius and insanity being separated by a very fine line.
Ironically, Downey Jr. takes on the Lopez role, the writer for the L.A. Times who takes an interest in a homeless, mentally ill person, who is quite talented musically.
At first, one thinks that the Jamie Foxx role is one of someone being autistic. Look, he was nothing more than a homeless person, who is musically gifted but at the same time is quite a nut job.
The film seems to be as erratic as Foxx's behavior. There is one scene where he looks like a character right out of James Cagney's 1942 rendition of Yankee Doodle Dandy.
Following his outburst and violent scene, the uneven script has Foxx in a home and quickly improving.
Films dealing with mental illness are so hard to depict on screen. A case in point was Olivia De Havilland's 1948 "The Snake Pit." At least, you knew there why the De Havilland part cracked up. Not so in the case of this film. Unevenly told, you don't even have sympathy for the character that Foxx is trying to depict.