A Boy Called Po

The subject 11-yr-old boy's name is Patrick, but he is called Po. His mother just died and his engineer dad is having difficulty juggling single parenthood and his job, and a big design project for a new type of airplane. Po has autism but is very bright, and has a vivid imagination. When he puts his mother's old scarf over his head he can escape to any number of far away exotic worlds.

It is a good story and the movie is very well made. There are some interesting developments, one of which is dad's discovery that Po had been making stock moves in dad's financial portfolio and it was worth many times more than he thought it would be.

My wife and I watched it on Amazon streaming movies. It is the type of movie I'd watch again after 6 to 12 months.

As someone who has worked in the autism field for nearly a decade, I can vouch for "Po" as a film that captures the everyday challenges of thousands of families across the globe. Director John Asher's emphasis on the rawness of autism is met with magical cinematography that transports the audience to places beyond fantasy. Asher is the father of a son, Evan, who is on the autism spectrum, and insights from his personal experience are evident in the film.

Expertly written, the storyline grabs the viewer and takes them on a ride across the fine line of imagination and reality. Christopher Gorham and Julian Feder are an on-screen "dream team" - connected, convincing, and compelling.

"Po" is a brilliant film worth seeing again and again.

I really did not expect to enjoy this movie, but indeed I did. Never before have I seen such an authentic portrayal of autism . Julian Feder was truly brilliant . (Freddie Highmore could/should take lessons.) Only one other movie captured my heart by its authenticity and that was "Whale Watcher" and the stellar performance by Keisha Castle-Hughes. These two actors were and are talented beyond their age.

To say that it is poorly written is an euphemism. This is one of the worst movies that I have ever seen. It is unrealistic in so many ways that ir almost hurts. Even if it truly represents the challenges of parenting a child with autism, it is impossible to take it seriously since the depiction of the world/society/environment is so far from real.

Even the soundtrack can upset anyone: there is a main song which goes with everything that's played every 5 minutes, loosing it's meaning and making the experience of watching this movie even worse.

If it wasn't for the two main actors, who were surprisingly good, given that their línes were usually terrible, I would rate it even lower.

Why this movie would win any awards, let alone twelve, is a mystery to me. From the first minutes you get that awful feeling this movie is made for Lifetime. I was actually surprised it wasn't. That typical horrible piano music you get in every scene, it's just cringing to hear, it's a basic signature for lousy Lifetime or Hallmark tv-movies. the story is also typical, we got to learn a life lesson here, but first let's fill the movie with mediocre and unnecessary scenes. You won't hear me saying that some passages aren't worth watching, the ones about autism and the imaginary world they live in were interesting to watch, but for example when the autist disappears after calling a taxi that comes pick him up at the special needs school, driving him far away and that without getting paid and without warning the police, that's the kind of stupid scenes that bring down a story that could have been good. Julian Feder did a decent job playing his character, he's the best actor of this movie. His father played by Christopher Gorham is the opposite, mediocre acting, just the kind you would expect for a tv-movie. It's not because it's a dramatic movie about autism that it's going to be good. There are wonderful movies about autism, but A Boy Called Po isn't one of them.