an inspirational story that doesn't inspire, for all that it tries and might aspire to be

Rating: 4/10 (3 May 2009)

I went into the Soloist not won over by the trailer. Indeed I thought it looked like something that we see in Hollywood from time to time, which is a hyped-up story of an underdog with not all his screws tied up being inspirational to those who are down on their luck. It looked like, frankly, pablum. But I also thought that an actor such as Robert Downey Jr being in the film might mean some promise, something stimulating about the project that would attract someone like him, one of the best American actors working today. Turns out, this is not the case.
What attracted Downey Jr I can't say; was it the material, the true life story of Steve Lopez's chronicling of Nathanial Ayers Jr, or was it Joe Wright, the director of Atonement at the helm? All of these questions can be asked, but what we're left with is the film itself, and left to judge it on what is here. What the Soloist is is an overwrought, crammed-up and morally questionable presentation of a story that, frankly, doesn't give much uplift when the lights come up. The story of Ayers, a schizophrenic who happens to be a virtuoso musician living on the streets of LA and connecting somehow with a sympathetic columnist, is one where there really isn't hope, despite what the trailers and ads might say.
In fact, I believe, a moral of the story would be: "yeah, try as you might to be a 'friend', whatever that means in this context, but these 'people' on the streets, whatever they're qualities and talents that are apparent, should be left alone and without much medication to get them in a better frame of mind if at all possible." At the end we're given a tacked-on catharsis statement from Lopez on how Ayers affected him, but it's not very inspirational. It's just sad, and not in that fulfilling kind of way.
The makers of the Soloist probably thought they were making a grand statement on the power of friendship and connecting with the mentally ill. But there are so many other films that one could spend there time with, given all of the promising ingredients here. If you want to see a movie about a relatively normal guy and a mentally warped guy watch Rainman; if you want to watch good Downey Jr movies watch his output last year; for Foxx, 2004's output (especially Collateral); for classical music put to dizzying visual heights, Fantasia (which, I should add, Wright desperately tries to emulate in the scene where Lopez and Ayers see the recital and all of those colors flash through his mind ending with the pretentious line: "Beethoven is in the room").
On top of Wright crowding in FAR too much into making it a feat of the visual, even when it's not needed to express something about the story or the characters or mood (and an inconsistent one at that as it moves jarringly between flights of fancy like the shot careening across the sky with birds flying around to, yes, a documentary interlude on the homeless), Foxx goes way too over-the-top in his performance. There is nigh a shred of subtlety, and even if this is the point which it well may be I was never really convinced or drawn in to this real person, Nathanial Ayers, who apparently still is on the streets of LA mumbling and playing wonderful music. Downey Jr still does what he can with his character, and actually does pull us in with his conflict of his profession and his feelings for this man he looks after.
But one actor can't really save what is ultimately a heavy-handed story of inspiration that lacks inspiration or triumph-of-the-human-spirit element to make it worthwhile. It's simply another Hollywood vehicle for hope that tries too hard and not hard enough. Wright may be a talent to watch, and Atonement showed those sparks, but it's not here.