Cries from the Heart

Strightfoward and at the same time painful made for TV movie involving a severely autistic seven year old boy Michael, Bradley Pierce. Michael was well on his way to be cured of his autism when he's molested, by one of the persons who's supposed to look after him, and not able to tell his parents and therapist what happen. Karen, Mellisa Gilbert, has her hands full with her young son Michael. We see early in the movie "A Cry from the Heart" Michael wondering away from her as she's on the phone with her husband Roger, Marcus Flanagan, and almost getting himself run over by a car in the street.

Trying to get Michael help for his autism Karen gets him enrolled in this special school and dormitory outside town that specialized in troubled children like himself. Working with Michael is Terry, Patty Duke, who the boy takes an immediate liking too and within days responds to her therapy. This at first impresses his mom, Karen, but later makes her feel as if she let him down all these years growing up autistic, by not being able to do for him then what Terry is now doing now.

The movie has Karen develop a very strange hostility toward Terry even though she's doing everything that Karen would have hoped for her son, cure him of his autism. There's also the fact that both Karen and her husband Roger are separated and she feels that may be a factor it young Michael's autism, and his not being able to overcome it. There's also Karen's suspicions of Michael's autism being genetic on her part. In fact Michael strangely tells his mom, by typing it out on a computer, that he feels that his father left him and Karen because he once broke his car window.

With Michael getting better every day in his ability to communicate and respond to both Terry and his mom all of a sudden he falls back into the world of non-communication that he was in before he entered the school. It's that what brings both Terry and Karen together and takes away their differences, or at least Karen's,with each other. In finding out what was it that destroyed all the progress that was achieved in by them in getting Michael out of the helpless autistic state that he was in. It later turns out that Michael was molested by someone near and dear to him and that person may well have molested many other boys like himself who he's in charge of.

The last half of "Cries from the Heart" is very gripping by changing course with Michael together with Terry having to go on trial to testify against his counselor Jeff, Peter Spears, for sexually abusing him. It would be really hard for young Michael to testify, this by tapping out his answers on a computer keyboard, with Jeff and his parents, in the courtroom. State D.A Ms.Tolbert, Lisa Banes, has doubts if Michael could go through with being able to not only testify against Jeff but have a jury believe him.

With the entire state case against Jeff dependent on Michael's testimony it forces D.A Tolbert to put him on the stand and have him relive all the horrors that he went through again. Michael goes on to prove that he can handle that, as well as his autism, much better then even those who have faith in him ever thought possible.

First off I wanna say I found this movie on tubi and it covers a very heavy and disturbing topic that deeply troubles me so I was worried going in. I think the characters are very good, the mother, and teacher and little boy are all great characters who I cared about. And I don't think the plot is bad at all at least in the beginning, however once the teacher started using facilitated communication the plot kind of lost me a bit. My main issue with the film is I don't think its plausible. What I mean is, the child is portrayed as severely autistic to the point where he cannot communicate and the film shows that the boy has a severe learning disability. In the beginning he can't even spell or seem to read. A regular child who is getting groomed is not going to understand what is happening to them is wrong, much less a child with a severe learning disability so that part just didn't feel realistic to me. How would he even understand what happened to him or know it was bad? I felt the plot would have been more realistic if the boy had been older at least where he could understand the concept of what happened. Secondly even if the child knew what happened was wrong, I don't believe the jury would believe him because he isn't able to really communicate properly. I feel the beginning and middle are good but the ending just feels incredibly contrived. I get the film makers probably wanted a feel good ending but in terms of the way the child is portrayed and his circumstances the ending just isn't realistic, and because of that I couldn't fully enjoy this movie. All that being said it is a decent film and the boy playing the character Michael did a amazing job, I would've really believed he was autistic.

The film shows real difficulties with autism, with communication being a big obstacle. Breaking through this obstacle is a major factor in relieving tension and frustration on both sides with amazing results.

Acting by Bradley is above and beyond, it shows he has real talent.

I already love Melissa Gilbert and Patty Duke (a tragic loss there) so I'm pretty biased in praising their performances.

Needless to say, the other subject this film is about - abuse - saddens me a great deal. You wish such things didn't happen but reality proves different.

As an autistic girl myself, I found myself relating to a good few of Michael's behaviors. (Stimming, easily frustrated and getting uncomfortable in new environments) The acting was very genuine and and felt as if I was there in person. I really felt myself tearing up a couple times, both feeling happy and sorrow. The whole time I was on edge and was very invested. Anyone saying "bad autism rep" CLEARLY doesn't understand that autism is a spectrum and there's lots of people that act similar to Michael. I do not know if the actor playing Michael is autistic in real life, but he had done a very good job protraying a low functioning autistic boy. I would definitely recommend.

I found the movie was well put together, and had a very good story line.

It's about time that some-one actually displayed what is going on in these sort of places, as I do not feel it is appropriate for these sort of things to be going on.