Maze

As a person with TS my whole life, this movie was quite refreshing to see. The Tic Code was actually a little better overall because it was about a child and the stuff he faces with TS - it hit close to home for me.

But this one was a pretty accurate portrayal. I loved the acting and for the first time in my life actually liked Laura Linney. She's a good actress but I usually hate her. Not here.

The refreshing part about this movie is that it portrayed the following things:

-People with TS can be successful -People with TS have normal human feeling like the rest of humanity -People with TS can have friends and relate to others - the TS is the only thing that's "off" -Being casted out as young child by all who think you're a freak (especially your parents)and not being guided through it is what leads to low self esteem and isolation - not the disorder itself -That not all people with TS are these sweet and nice people that others dump all over - in other words, I thought Lyle Maze was an a-hole - that came with him being an eccentric artist - not really the TS

Of course as a TS person I gotta look at the only 2 things they didn't get right.....

-They just had to stick in the swearing right? When will there be a movie about TS that doesn't deal with the swearing? It's only 15% of all TS sufferers - I've never had that problem

-Doing his tics while he was painting - and while he was in the sexual tension moments with Laura Linney and on his date with her friend.

When you're in the moment - your tics pretty much disappear. If that were me on the date, my tics would be barely noticeable because the uneasiness is what overtakes you. During sex - forget it - it's as if TS was never a problem. As I sit here and write - no tics.

But alas, I know this nitpicky stuff really isn't the central theme of the movie. The acting and the story were stupendous. Good show!

"Maze" tells of a trio of young adults with one being an artist with Tourette's syndrome, Lyle Maze (Morrow)...oh, and a baby too. Slick, fresh, and a different kind, a better kind of love story, "Maze" integrates Tourette's with the other aspects of the film but the film is not about Tourette's. It's about love. Not romance. Love.

A finely crafted piece, "Maze" spends the whole run time developing the characters and their relationships while explaining nothing, refusing to be a typical Hollywood no-brainer by spelling everything out with sky writing. Rather it assumes the audience is intelligent and empathic enough to understand the thoughts and feelings of the characters...something more often seen in foreign films. The antithesis of schmaltz, this hip and light-hearted drama is easy to get into, runs quick, and has a great ending. Kudos to Morrow for this wonderful film. ("Maze" also has the best birth scene I've seen in a movie.)

I kind of liked this movie, but I feel it is not quite as good as the reviews indicate. Good points: Excellent acting all around, good writing and decent direction. Bad points: Very slow pacing (too many dead spots), weak editing, and an annoying cinematography technique of switching to a first person view (and a blurry one at that) when Lyle is having a Tourette's attack. Overall: Good, but not great, 6/10.

An artist suffering from Tourette's Syndrome falls in love with the pregnant girlfriend of his best friend while the latter's away. Morrow is a pretty good actor, but the film is undone by his pedestrian efforts as director and writer. The script is meant to be inspirational, but the execution is dull and eventually sappy. The direction is hackneyed. The symptoms of the disease are on display so often that it's a distraction; one waits for the next attack to manifest itself rather than focusing on the story. The only good thing about this tedious and clichéd film is Linney, who is terrific in just about anything she does.

When I come across a movie that is directed by and stars a former TV actor who has only done sporadic film work, I worry that it is a vanity piece and not worth the price of the popcorn accompaniment.

I am always happy when I turn out to be wrong.

Maze is a very nice little film. Not great. Not staggering. It is just quite good. It concerns the flowering relationship between an afflicted artist and the girlfriend of one of his buddies: how and why it happens, the inner turmoil that results and the logical conclusion to the relationship of the three main characters. It doesn't stray from the focus on the main characters and in the course of the film we see and understand how they came to be where they are. To be honest, I have always considered Laura Linney and Rob Morrow to be only adequate actors. They are pleasant enough to watch, but I have never expected much from either. Even with Linney's recent critical acclaim, I didn't expect much from her in this film. Again I was wrong about both actors. Morrow does quite a good job giving us a character afflicted with Tourette's without it either being soooo distracting as to be annoying or looking like a histrionic excorcism. I felt that he was able to show a character that was crippled by his place in society but still letting us see that underneath was a basically good person. And letting us see that good person makes it believable that Laura Linney's character would love him, despite his disease's symptoms. Linney as well gave a performance of growing depth and understanding. We see her character move from genuinely liking Morrow as a comfortable friend to loving him as the true partner she wanted all along. We see it in her eyes when she looks at him, when they work and read together and in the very simple act of taking his hand and quietly calming him while sitting in an audience at a recital.

If you enjoy simple, focused, character movies, I would suggest checking Maze out at your local video store.