Strong performances, unsatisfying story line

Rating: 5/10 (24 April 2009)

I was expecting much from this film and was disappointed. The fault is not that of the two leads, both of whom did well; I enjoyed Robert Downey Jr.'s performance as the reporter, and as the homeless man, Foxx may have earned himself another Oscar nomination. But the plot was lacking. Yes, it's based on a true story, and a glossy traditional Hollywood ending was neither wanted nor possible. But I think the story's focus was wrong. I expected, and wanted, to see the story of a musical prodigy whose talent was lost to mental illness; but this is the reporter's story instead, of his evolution from seeing the homeless man first as a story, then as a project, then as a human being. It's a familiar plot in fiction and non-fiction, and one not particularly well done here. I didn't get enough sense of who Foxx's character was before he landed on the street, of what the decades of his illness had been like, of what he and his talent had meant to his family. And we see almost nothing of his interactions with his peers at Juilliard. Because we don't see much of what his life was like before his descent into schizophrenia, we don't have the powerful sense of loss we should have when we're brought back to the present and see the broken mumbling man guarding his cart full of trash. Instead the film gets caught up in sensationalistic (and admittedly powerful) depictions of the squalor and ruined faces of skid row. But I've seen depictions of homelessness elsewhere. I wanted to know the story of this lost prodigy, and I didn't see it. The film even wastes time on silly touches such as the Downey character's fumbles with his cellphone at the public toilet and his getting coyote urine spilled all over himself as he tries to battle raccoons. Comic relief for adolescent boys, perhaps, but I don't think many of them will be coming to see this movie.