OUT OF MY MIND - Mark Reviews Movies

Out of My Mind, Disney+

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Review by Mark Dujsik | November 21, 2024

The girl has a lot to say, but no one, not even the people closest to her, seems to think that's the case. Melody (Phoebe-Rae Taylor) has cerebral palsy, uses a wheelchair, and is non-verbal, and despite the impression everyone around her might have, Out of My Mind almost immediately gives us access to the thoughts inside Melody's head. With an audience for perhaps the first time in her life, she insists that we listen.

With that simple setup, director Amber Sealey's film makes its main character instantly empathetic. After all, who hasn't been a kid—or an adult, for that matter—who felt ignored or overlooked, resigned to stew in thoughts and not feel free to communicate them? We don't see Melody for her medical condition or any of its obvious associations, because the film gives us the fullness of her mind—what she loves, fears, becomes frustrated by, and wants for her life now and in the future.

As portrayed in this story, the tragedy here isn't that the girl has cerebral palsy. It's that everyone else can't look past her condition to even consider how much of a life she has going on inside her.

As it so often does in storytelling, perspective matters, and the one chosen by screenwriter Daniel Stiepleman, adapting Sharon M. Draper's novel, makes all the difference here. Because it stays so close to Melody, this doesn't become a story of what it's like to live with debilitating health condition. Instead, it's a coming-of-age story about a pre-teen girl figuring out who she is, what she wants, how to get those things, and, most importantly of all, how to assert herself and the place she wants in the world. Anyone can relate to those ideas.

That the film is honest about both Melody's limitations and how many of those actually come from the way other people perceive her gives it an admirable level of specificity, too. It's hard enough for a pre-teen to accomplish any of the things Melody wants to over the course of this story, but when people assume she's not even capable of wanting those things, how much more difficult must it be?

It's not as if Melody doesn't have anyone with whom to communicate, either. She has loving, doting, and protective parents in Diane (Rosemarie DeWitt) and Chuck (a very good Luke Kirby), as well as a younger sister (played by Emily Mitchell). The family has a routine down for all of additional steps and processes that need to happen to get Melody ready in the morning, into the van, and off to school, but when Melody's goldfish jumps out of its tank as the rest of the family is busy outside, there's little she can do about it.

She can't call out to her father or pick up the fish, and when Chuck discovers the mess his daughter made while trying to pour water from the tank on the fish, he's too frustrated to even try to comprehend what has happened. Melody knows and can communicate it using a board with letters and common words, but dad is too harried and hurried to take a minute to listen.

We have the full scope of those thoughts, though, provided by the voice of Jennifer Aniston, because she is Melody's favorite actress and, since the girl has no idea what her own voice would sound like, decides it might as well sound like that. The story here follows Melody as she's selected for a program that puts certain students from the local school's special education class into mainstream classrooms. That initiative is run by Katherine (Courtney Taylor), a post-doctoral student from a local university, who quickly figures out that Melody is more intelligent, capable, self-aware, and conscious of how other people perceive her than anyone else has.

With that premise in place, though, the rest of the becomes surprisingly ordinary. Melody tries to make friends with other students in the history class she attends once a week, focusing quite a bit on a bond with Rose (Maria Nash), because Melody really likes the girl's colorful shoes. She develops a crush on a smart boy in class, and eventually, Mr. Dimming (Michael Chernus), the history teacher, announces a test to become part of an exclusive quiz club, which will compete for a chance to win a national championship. Since Melody knows a lot from listening to audiobooks and watching educational TV programs, she assumes she's a shoo-in to be on the team.

The majority of the obstacles to her goals and desires here aren't on Melody or her condition, as she convinces her parents to look into a device that will vocalize her thoughts for her, starts spending time with Rose, notices the boy looking at her, and shows up for the test to determine quiz team members. The problem isn't her. It's with everyone else, as Rose is uncomfortable around Melody and seems to hang out with her from some sense of obligation. Then, there's the matter of the quiz team, which keeps becoming a problem only because of Dimming's presumptions and how her potential teammates think people will view them for having Melody on the team.

It would be easy to credit the film's sympathetic portrait to Aniston's narration, but the performance from Taylor, who also has cerebral palsy, is even more vital, because the frustration, disappointment, determination, and, finally, sense that Melody has found the confidence others have tried to deny her are right there in the actress' work. The casting of Out of My Mind, then, adds another level to the film's portrayal of someone who has an internal life, a point of view, plenty of worthwhile things to say, and just happens to be living with a disability.

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