I was disappointed to find that Sia's directorial debut isn't the trainwreck everyone says it is. That's why I decided to check it out because of all the negative reviews. What exactly is everyone having a problem with? Apparently, the detractors all hate the lead performance and even invented terms like Autistic Blackface to describe it. They all treat this movie as if it were an affront to humanity because of this performance saying that it's degrading to autistic people. Well, I'm high functioning autistic and I expected to be offended but came away realizing the character Music is meant to be low functioning. She can't speak, only communicates in noises and wears headphones to filter out the noise of the world because she has sensitive hearing. Sure, this isn't my experience and it isn't the experience of a lot of autistic adults, and I think the filmmakers know this. This character is not meant to be a representation of every autistic person in the world. I get that and was okay with the movie.
Basically, what we get is a retread of the Tom Cruise/Dustin Hoffman classic Rain Man and while it isn't original, it does have some nice unique touches that make it interesting. I love the creative music video sequences that Music dreams up, her way of communicating with the world, her way of making sense of it. I also found this movie to have heart, and I totally believe that Sia did this as a labor of love and a tribute to a good friend of hers who has autism.
This isn't the worst film I've seen by a long shot and I think it just became popular to hate on this film as some misguided act of virtue signaling. The more egregious act has been all of these people getting offended by this film in my place.
