OUT OF MY MIND– 4 STARS

Compared to the plucky subject and setting of the new Disney+ film Out of My Mind, this connection will be from left field and the way-back machine, but maybe the great American rock band Guns N’ Roses were onto something when they whistled and strummed their triplet of acoustic guitars on their 1989 power ballad “Patience.” The first lyric introducing the title says “All we need is just a little patience.” As it swells forward, the phrases and verbs surrounding the titular noun branch to include “could use some,” “gotta have more,” and “all it takes is.” Co-songwriter and frontman Axl Rose was speaking of his troubled romantic relationships, yet there’s a bridge to everyday life in there, especially for those with physical disabilities like Out of Mind’s main character Melody Brooks.

Played by first-time actress Phoebe-Rae Taylor, Melody is a 12-year-old wheelchair-dependent girl living with cerebral palsy which hinders her muscles from verbal speech. As a big fan of Friends, Melody “borrows” Jennifer Aniston’s voice to be her internal monologue to tell her story. Through the Emmy winner’s narrative pitch and personality, Melody introduces the challenges of her life as a middle-school student in 2002. She’s a list maker highly observant of condescending, fragile, and ignorant ways others treat her. As we watch Melody fail at communicating an emergency to her parents, Chuck and Diane– played by The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Emmy winner Luke Kirby and mumblecore queen Rosemarie DeWitt– her lament of “This will all go a lot better if you just listen” rings as true as any cathedral bell.

LESSON #1: BE PATIENT WITH ALL PEOPLE– But how do you listen to someone who can’t speak? Throughout this inspirational journey based on the best-selling young adult novel by Coretta Scott King Award-winning author Sharon M. Draper and adapted by On the Basis of Sex’s Daniel Stiepleman, Melody finds herself interacting with two different types of people. That’s where the silent and unheard echoes of Out of My Mind hit where Guns N’ Roses was coming from. In support, there are those who know “all it takes” and “all we need” is a little patience with Melody and, in contrast, the dismissive or uninformed others who fall under “could use some” and “gotta have more” in the same department of tolerance and acceptance.

Hopefully, viewers of Out of My Mind will also fall under the former and not the latter. Just like with Melody, patience is required and cynical stigmas need to be shelved for this family-friendly dramedy. Be patient because brilliance will be revealed and faith will be rewarded by an empathic engine of a film that demands to be required viewing– and maybe even prescribed penance– for several ages and generations of privilege circulating society today. What this girl and this movie want to say demands to be seen and heard.

Hopping back to the movie directed by Amber Sealey (No Man of God), Melody has spent all seven of her school years with the same special education teacher in the same modular addition classroom constructed outside of Spaulding Elementary School in Sacramento, California. It’s a separated multi-age/multi-ability room where Melody is loved, accepted, but not entirely challenged for her grade level and cognitive capacity. Dr. Catherine Ray (prolific TV actress Courtney Taylor), a visiting expert working on a new thesis, quickly recognizes that shortfall for Melody. Through twisted arms and Melody’s euphoric delight, Dr. Ray gets parental and administrative permission to have Melody join the mainstream middle school classroom one day a week, starting with Mr. Dimming’s (Michael Chernus of Severence) history class.

LESSON #2: THE IMPORTANCE OF ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY– While this is Melody’s chance to join peers her own age and intelligence, she is still bound by lower-than-analog speaking and signaling constraints. One has to remind themselves for a moment that Out of My Mind takes place in 2002, predating today’s indispensable smart devices and apps. Initially, her only communication tool is a Core board of common phrases, emotions, and terms she can point at. Melody’s social and classroom presence greatly improves when Dr. Ray secures the medical permission for her to receive a speech-generating AAC (augmentative and alternative communication) tablet device, which was horrendously expensive and newfangled tech two decades ago.

Now armed with a voice to back her facial expression and smiles, Melody’s smarts, kindness, and courage are now observable for those who care to wait, look, and follow where she’s going. Heard is one thing. Listened to and believed is still another, and therein lies her continued educational and community challenges going further in Out of My Mind. Like the source book, the film plots a narrative filled with mutual frustrations, mistaken sympathy, and withheld respect.

LESSON #3: BE AN ADVOCATE– This newly revealed path to success and acceptance laid before Melody is a result of people coming forward to be a voice for the voiceless. Her parents were automatic, but even their eyes are opened wider by the potential they didn’t fully know their daughter had until this new venture. The additions of Courtney Taylor’s Dr. Ray and Judith Light’s kooky neighbor Ms. V. not only raise the “good guy” quotient in Melody’s tribe against her prerequisite fraction of doubters, but become determined and positive example beacons of advocacy that brighten the entire movie. The target audience of Out of My Mind, meaning fellow upper-elementary and middle-school children and their families, need to see those unselfish helpers.

LESSON #4: BE INCLUSIVE– All of the team efforts at work in front of and behind the camera in Out of My Mind focus the vital morals and greater good possible to this last lesson of being inclusive. Stiepleman, by way of Draper, presents a stellar imperative command of “presume competence.” It’s that simple of a mindset and they deserve to be there. The film roots that on in touching and realistic ways without overly grandiose swings. The act of not selling people like Melody–or her wonderful real-life counterpart Phoebe-Rae Taylor for that matter– short is allowing them access to equitable opportunities to fit in. 

If Disney can mindfully and proudly put this kind of grounded and gratifying movie on Phoebe’s wheels and shoulders, nothing should be excluded at the smaller everyday levels to others with all sorts of exceptionalities. Out of My Mind allows those valuable takeaways. Lastly, there’s a positive label going around in the educational community declaring “My Disability is My Superpower.” In that case, move over Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman. Phoebe-Rae Taylor is your movie superhero of the year.