"A Mile in His Shoes" was not the worst touchy-feely movie I've ever seen, but it definitely is not near the top (which speaks much to the amount of touchy-feely movies I watch)...
The movie has Dean Cain, which really means it has that one guy that you recognize but have no clue what his name is... you just know you've seen him in movies before. And honestly, he wasn't awful... I was actually expecting much, much worse.
In the movie, Dean Cain plays baseball coach Arthur Murphy, who coaches a local semi-pro team who seems to only play one team the entire movie... seriously, every game in this movie is versus a team from Fargo... there is no other opponent featured. Anywho... Coach Murphy is sent to talk to a young kid, Mickey, from Indiana who has Aspergers Syndrome, but his parents have no desire to have him play professional baseball. Mickey's only baseball "experience" was throwing apples at a metal pan on the farm, which should illicit any thinking person to ponder how they know about this kid and why they'd pay him to play professional baseball.
Anywho.... Mickey has Aspergers Syndrome, which is a form of high-functioning autism, and they couldn't have missed the mark any worse than they did. As someone who has worked with kids with Aspergers Syndrome, it was actually kind of difficult to watch. Kids with Aspergers are generally very intelligent and often very poor in social skills... Mickey was quite the opposite on multiple fronts. Yeah, there are special cases, but if you're gonna make a movie about Aspergers, find a middle of the road type of example to work with... it just works better.
So Mickey plays on the team and is well liked and is actually pretty good. That's all I'll say about the synopsis of the movie.
I wasn't on the cast of this movie, nor do I know EXACTLY what it was they were trying to accomplish by making it, but I can't imagine it accomplished its purpose. I'm sure it was rather low budget (if not, their financial folks should be fired forever)... but that doesn't excuse making a poor example of a neurological disorder that is actually pretty important in our culture right now. From a production standpoint, outside of Dean Cain, the acting was awful. Mickey's dad, Clarence, was maybe the most painful acting performance I've had to watch in a while. The actor who played Mickey, Luke Schroder, was not good either... more training and coaching on how to act his role would have gone miles for this movie (pun very much intended).
My wife and I saw this movie on Netflix, and seeing the description, we decided to watch. We weren't upset we picked it—we would have turned if off otherwise—we just wish Aspergers Syndrome was portrayed better... and maybe, just maybe the movie wouldn't have been so bad.
