Adam

A couple days after seeing The Hurt Locker, I was back out at the Ridgway 4 in one of their "down and up" auditoriums to see another independent feature. This time it was Adam, a romance set in New York about a 29-year old electronics engineer with severe Asperger's Syndrome and a "normal" young woman, who movies into his building as his neighbor.

After I got back from seeing it, I told Greg about it and he said, "sounds like Forrest Gump," which is pretty funny because in the movie, the title character says at one point, "I'm not Forrest Gump, you know," which of course just points out the fact that he is indeed like Forrest Gump.

Well, it mostly worked and was sort of interesting. There is a strong subplot involving the young woman's father, played by Peter Gallagher as a very extraverted and less-than-honest financier.

The theme of the movie centers on the dilemma of modern women in choosing between the two types of men that are available: honest but socially dysfunctionally, versus lying scum-bag but socially acceptable and approved. It's a duality that you see a lot in movies lately, as I've often discussed. In Hollywood's view, the only honest men who are not socially dysfunctional in some horrible way are usually homosexual.

The movie is lightehearted and indeed romantic, but it's also a tear-jerker. Greg (who is currently getting a divorce) is a meat and potatoes kind of guy, and I told him he probably wouldn't like this movie, but it would make a great date movie on DVD.