“LIFE, ANIMATED” My rating: A- (Opens Sept. 9 at the Tivoli)
89 minutes | MPAA rating: PG
If you can watch “Life, Animated” without experiencing at least one throat-constricting, utterly devastating sob, you may want to consider a career as a CIA interrogator.
Everyone else had best bring a hankie or two to this autism-themed documentary.
At the center of Roger Ross Williams’ outstanding film is Owen Suskind, now in his early 20s, who was a perfectly normal little boy until age 3, at which time he began showing signs of profound autism.
His parents, Ron (a Wall Street Journal reporter) and Cornelia were devastated. Their once-bright, verbal and loving son had turned into a silent, solitary creature.
Salvation came — and this is absolutely the truth — in the form of Walt Disney cartoons.
Disney’s animated features were among the few pastimes that engaged young Owen. A breakthrough came when, while watching “The Little Mermaid,” Owen spoke for the first time in years. At first it sounded like gibberish, but when Ron rewound the tape several times he realized Owen was repeating a line from the movie: “Just your voice.”
Recalls his dad in joy and disbelief: “He’s still in there. He’s still in there.”
Ron utilized a hand puppet of one of Owen’s favorite Disney characters, the villainous parrot Iago (voiced by Gilbert Gottfried) from “Aladdin,” to engage Owen in conversation. Only then did he realize that Owen had memorized every Disney film he’d ever seen and was able to speak using the characters’ dialogue.
“Life, Animated” uses old photographs and home video to tell Owen’s story, augmenting the archival material with new animated sequences (how appropriate) as well as classic clips from the Disney canon (Disney, usually fiercely protective of its intellectual properties, appears to have set aside its litigious ways in favor of getting Owen’s story out to the public).
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