Rose Byrne attempts “heart-warming,” we’d prefer she stick to “badass”

Despite the offbeat love story and rock-solid leading couple, Adam disappoints

By Erica Phillips
Published: June 26th, 2009 | 4:55pm

Unfortunately, for both leading actors Rose Byrne and Hugh Dancy, Adam may not see more than a couple of weeks in theaters this summer. Written and directed by Max Mayer, a well known New York stage director and founder of the prestigious New York Stage and Film Company (which bred such talents as Frances McDormand and Mia Farrow), this indie has all the ingredients for quirky success – and fails to deliver.

For both Byrne and Dancy, the film offered an opportunity to perform character types we have not yet seen from them. For Dancy, it is that of Adam, a young man in his late 20s whose parents have passed away (his father at the opening of the film, his mother years earlier) and left him on his own in an Upper East Side Manhattan condo. Handsome and complicated, Adam suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome, a form of Autism that causes severe difficulties in social interaction and leads him to focus all of his attention on his childlike obsession with outer space.

Byrne plays Adam’s sensitive but spoiled neighbor, Beth – a marked contrast to her strong-willed roles in Damages and Wicker Park. She moves into the apartment downstairs (presumably paid for by her wealthy financier father) shortly after the death of Adam’s father, and the two become friends when they cross paths in the tiny basement laundry room. Beth teaches at a private elementary school and is somehow intrigued by Adam’s awkward behavior. He invites her into his apartment to see the planetarium he’s created in an extra bedroom, and the two develop mutual crushes.

The film is noble in its attempt to address a societal phenomenon in a sensitive and realistic light, but the end product turns out more like an after-school special than a unique independent film. The moviegoer becomes painfully cognizant of the screenplay’s hiccups at several moments, such as the first time Adam explains his condition to Beth or when Beth asks the principal of her school if she can borrow a book about Autism. The formula of these scenes will make you shift in your seat uncomfortably.

Adam may have worked if they’d dropped the love story angle altogether, favoring Dancy’s brooding and complicated portrayal of Adam free from Byrne’s character’s strained attempt at “understanding” him. The addition of Peter Gallagher as Beth’s father – who is accused of financial fraud and placed on trial in a side plot – adds several entirely unnecessary Gallagher moments that should have stayed back with American Beauty or The O.C. where they belong.

All told, it was still nice to catch Byrne and Dancy on screen together, and it looks like future projects for both actors should be worth seeing.