This fine film was meant to be the subject of last week's review, but I found myself uncharacteristically wound up last week, and I felt the need to step back and reassess some things before proceeding. I try not to be too political or subversive with this rag because that sort of thing ticks me off a little, but there are still those things that get the green Vulcan blood boiling like pon farr from time to time. You may not get to experience this article in its original form, but I think that's for the better anyway. This week, we're looking at a film that got very little recognition from the mainstream, but nonetheless, managed to make a mark on the general topography of our social world. Please Stand By, in my opinion, is a film that represents what I would like to see more films attempt to do in earnest so let's just jump right in and take a look at this one, shall we? Due to the subject matter, and the nature of the material, I just want to say that no offense is meant in the presentation of this article. As someone who struggles with mental illness myself, I'm deeply sympathetic to those who share in that struggle. But I only know what I know about things, and I will attempt to articulate things to the best of my limited understanding. Please check your pitchforks and torches at the door. Thanks.
The movie begins with a space sequence as the opening credits roll and vague, sometimes unintelligible dialog. Finally, we see two figures in undeniably Star Trek EVA suits on a desert planet struggling. We then cut to Dakota Fanning, playing Wendy, typing on her laptop. We watch as Wendy meets with her counselor, Scottie. We're also shown that Wendy lives in an assisted living home for higher functioning people with certain mental challenges. These fine folks receive regular counselling and the structure that they need to act self-sufficiently in the world. Wendy walks Scottie through her daily routine, which is at times humorous, and at other times just a little uncomfortable, but it gives us a lot of insight into who Wendy is, and how she deals with her own personal challenges day-to-day. We're meant to gather that Wendy has Asperger's, and that kind of serves as the main premise for the film. We're made aware through dialog, that Wendy is a Star Trek fan who is working on a script for a writing contest that Paramount is holding. The grand prize is $100,000, and Wendy is determined to win it.
Wendy goes to work that day, and a co-worker gives her a mixed CD of cool music. She appears to blow off the gesture, but this is where one has to remember that she may not necessarily know how to respond to the gesture. We further learn that Wendy has a sister named Audrey, who is played by Alice Eve, who is going to visit soon. Audrey has a newborn daughter and we're shown that she and her husband are preparing to move from their house, which we later learn is Audrey's and Wendy's childhood home. Audrey watches a video of she and Wendy learning how to set a table. Wendy does well until the stimulation overwhelms her and she throws a tantrum. We also see Audrey successfully teaching Wendy how to play a song on the piano. It's not a drawn out sequence, but it effectively shows the ups and downs Audrey experienced growing up with her sister. The visit happens, and Audrey attempts to converse with Wendy. However, Wendy is fixated with the contest as her script needs to be mailed that day, and she wants to go home with Audrey. Wendy sees herself as self-reliant enough to leave, but Audrey worries what might happen with a baby at home, and the conversation turns south quickly as Wendy falls into a tantrum. Scottie has found a way to help Wendy calm down, and walks Wendy through this exercise. Audrey leaves, and it's one of those scenes where the actress holds her composure until its deemed an 'appropriate' place to lose it. I commend actors that can pull this off in a realistic fashion because I imagine it's pretty difficult. But we can tell that Audrey is shaken, and crushed by the way the visit turned out.
Wendy remains upset as she had hoped to go back to live with her sister now that she had learned to take more responsibility upon herself, and she retreats to her room to cool off. She realizes that she's missed her window of opportunity to mail her script and becomes really upset. She begins to think of ways that she might manage to still be able to mail it, but it's Martin Luther King Jr day that Monday, it's already Sunday, and the scripts have to be delivered by 5 pm Tuesday so the USPS is out of the question. Concluding that, Wendy resolves to deliver the script on her own. She lives in the Oakland area, and Paramount Studios is LA, which is about 400 miles so it's not unreasonable to assume that taking a car ride, it might be a day trip, or two, but that wouldn't make for a very entertaining film at all. Wendy checks her notebook to see when sunrise is that day because she can't leave the house until sunrise, and then lays down to watch the clock. In preparation for leaving, she grabs a sandwich, and a few other things before heading out the door.
On her way down the street, Wendy's dog Pete follows here incessantly, and refuses to go home so Wendy puts him in her bag and soldiers on. Next, we're treated to humorous scene of Wendy trying to figure out if her regular bus goes to LA. It doesn't and two drivers simply tell her that, but in films, the third time is always the charm, and the third drive directs her to terminal where she can buy a ticket to LA. He's even considerate enough to get her headed in the right direction when she takes off the opposite way. Wendy has to cross Market Street, which she's been told never to do under any circumstances however, the bus terminal is on the other side of the street. She bravely crosses, and that's when we know that we've reached the road trip portion of the film! She finds the bus with the LA label in the sign thingy and the driver informs her that a ticket is needed to ride the bus. Wendy begins to write that down in her notebook, and the driver tells her to go buy a ticket. Wendy does so and comes back with the ticket to ride only to see a sticker prohibiting animals from riding the bus. Wendy does her best to hide Pete while giving the ticket to the driver and taking a seat. The trip starts off pretty well. We see Wendy enjoying listening to her music on her iPod. She's even imported the songs from the mix CD that her co-worker, Nemo gave her!
Difficulties arise when Pete begins to whine. Wendy realizes that he has to pee, but there's no where for dog to pee on a bus. Wendy goes to talk to the bus driver who informs her that there's a stop an hour up the road where Pete, who is just a friend, and totally not a dog, can pee when they arrive, but Pete can't hold it and so he pees on the bus. The bus driver kicks both of them off the bus at the next stop, and it's out in the middle of nowhere. There isn't even a terminal anywhere near by! Wendy starts huffing it in the general direction of LA, and stumbles upon a farmer's market of some sort. It's closed due to drought, but Wendy ventures in as she sees a hose from which she and Pete could get some water. After hydrating, Wendy stumbles upon a young woman with an infant. There's a short conversation about infants, and Wendy's tantrums in her younger years. The young woman tells Wendy that she and her boyfriend are headed to LA, and that they would be happy to give her a ride. Wendy accepts, but needs to use the restroom first. As Wendy is using said facilities, the young woman roots through Wendy's backpack and steals Wendy's money! Wendy approaches the boyfriend's truck, and the boyfriend rips the lanyard thing from Wendy's neck. He wants her iPod, but her notebook is also on that thing. Wendy shrieks plaintively for the woman to give back the notebook, which fortunately the woman does.
Wendy is left without a ride, and without her iPod, and we get a good understanding of the importance of that blasphemous piece of junk (Zune for life!) almost immediately. Wendy has reached a town, and there are loud noises everywhere! There are dogs barking, motorcycles revving, people yelling, and all sorts of things overloading Wendy's senses. It's pretty apparent by the way that they play the scene that the iPod was meant to help Wendy tune out the din that the world offers up non-stop in order to help her not feel overwhelmed by it all. Now she's having to learn to adjust to not having her coping mechanism. Already having eaten her sandwich and apparently feeling hungry again, Wendy stops into a convenience store to buy some food. It's here, preparing to buy something, that she finally realizes that her money is missing. She grabs a bag of candy bars and asks the attendant how much the bag costs. He tells her that it costs a dollar a bar. She begins going through the math to add up to a total, but then the coolest grandma besides yours and mine steps in to thoroughly chastise the man for being a douche. He tells her the real price, and she pays. The grandma gets Wendy something to drink and they sit and talk.
The grandma asks who is taking care of Wendy, and Wendy tells her that it's more of a solo mission. Grandma feels like that that isn't right and someone should be taking care of Wendy. We learn that grandma has a grandson who also has Asperger's and that grandma is on her way back to LA after having visited with the grandson. Grandma invites Wendy to ride on the bus that the nursing home used to transport a group, and they take off. There's a fun scene where Wendy tells grandma all about the script that was written and why Wendy's on the trek to LA. The grandma doesn't quite get it, but tells Wendy that her grandson would love it, and that Wendy is pretty cool. Unfortunately, some genius decided to let one of the old people drive the bus and he nods off and crashes the bus. Wendy is knocked out and when she comes to, she's at a hospital. At this point, it's important to share that Scottie and Audrey have been searching frantically to find Wendy. They were able to track her to the bus station in Oakland, and the bus company told them where the driver kicked Wendy off the bus, but they come up empty beyond that. It's not until Wendy is admitted to the hospital that Scottie tracks her down, and only because Scottie was calling all of the hospitals between Oakland and LA. And then only because one of the nurses told Scottie that they had taken on a dog wearing as Star Trek uniform. It's more of a sweater with a science patch on it, but it's adorable! That's the piece of the puzzle that helps Scottie to finally track down Wendy.
Once Wendy is finally coherent, it's morning, and the sun is up. She's informed that she'll be moved to a different floor, probably to begin discharge procedures, but she doesn't want to be moved, she just wants to leave. She protests a bit, but is met with firm resistance from the nurse. She then complains that she has to pee really bad. The nurse protests at first, but then capitulates. While Wendy's in the restroom, the nurse tells some really disturbing stories from his youth that are pretty inappropriate to be sharing with anyone other than a trusted confidante or a therapist, to say the least of a random patient that you just met. Wendy takes quite a while in the restroom, and the nurse lets himself in. He sees an open window and no one in the room and takes off, yelling to all the other nurses that Wendy has climbed out of a window. However, Wendy had actually hidden in the cupboards under the sink, and once everyone takes off looking for her, she gets out, dresses, grabs her bags, leaves the sweater for Pete, and gets out of there. For some reason, her script is not secure at this point, and I guess because the plot called for it, she drops all of the loose pages. She tries to gather them all, but the nurses find her and are closing in so she takes what she's got and flees.
She's distraught over the loss of her script, but she finds some blank paper in a trash bin and starts writing. There's a scene where Scottie and her son are driving to retrieve Wendy, and the son helps Scottie to better understand Wendy's obsession with Star Trek a little. Scottie had never realized that Star Trek being about the character meant that there were many facets of human existence that are explored, and that Spock in particular struggles with emotions, and coming from a culture that looks down upon them, but feeling them all the same. When the two arrive, the find Wendy gone, and the remaining pages of her script on the ground. The son gathers them all up and the search continues. Meanwhile, Wendy has found the bus depot and attempts to get another ticket to LA. She's informed that there's not another bus until the morning. So Wendy asks if she can sit in the depot. The cashier agrees to that and Wendy works to bang out transcribing more of her lost script. Unfortunately, this bus depot closes and the cashier lady asks Wendy to leave. Wendy asks if she can stay on a bench out front, and the lady agrees to that a little bit warily, probably because it wasn't the best part of town.
Wendy awakes the next day, Tuesday, and attempts to 'shower' and do some of her usual routine. Then she attempts to buy another ticket, but she's out of money. The cashier turns her away, and so she finds the bus going to LA and sneaks into the luggage hold. We see the bus being unloaded in LA, and Wendy sneaking away. Next we see Wendy walking down a street. Two cops recognize her from a missing persons report and attempt to approach her. Wendy gets spooked and runs. One cop starts to take off after Wendy, but the one played by Patton Oswalt figures it's easier to give chase in their cruiser. They track Wendy to an apartment building and, in one of my personal favorite scenes, Patton Oswalt confronts Wendy, in Klingon! The two have a conversation in the language of warriors as Patton Oswalt attempts to gain enough of Wendy's trust to get her to the police station. It's a really cool scene. The partner has no idea what to make of things, which just adds to the levity of the scene. Wendy agrees to come with them, and Patton asks her if she speaks English. She tells him that she does.
Wendy is finally reunited with Scottie and Audrey, but she's also still determined to get her script in. As they're already there, everyone piles into Audrey's SUV and they head to Paramount Studios. Wendy takes her script onto the lot and looks for the building where the ads told her to send the script. She does, and it's the mail room. She approaches a man at a desk and tells him that she's arrived to turn in her script. It's almost 5 pm, and she's down to the wire, but still on time. The man tells her that scripts have to be postmarked and delivered by the mail service. He gets pretty snooty about it and asks for someone to call security. Wendy initially seems to back down to leave, but then rehearses a plan under her breath. She goes into an outburst and tries to explain to the man how hard it is to write a script. He's still unfazed and so she asks him if he knows who she is. He laughs as he does not, and she barrels by him and drops her script in the slot that's conveniently marked 'Star Trek scripts', and then she flees. She meets back up with Audrey and Scottie to inform them that her mission was a success. They go home.
We montage a bit at the end as we see Wendy give Nemo a mixed CD as a return gesture of affection. We learn that Wendy's script was not chosen, but the letter is really kindly worded, which I guess is pretty cool, and then we see Wendy visit Audrey and meet her niece for the first time. Pete even shows up, which is meant to insinuate that Wendy has been allowed to move back in with her sister. Then roll credits.
Now, you should know by now that this synopsis is not comprehensive by any stretch. I like to leave a bit of mystery for you guys to experience should you decide to check these things out for yourselves, but that covers the broad strokes. What I really enjoy about this film is how socially responsible it's attempting to be. In a world where 99% of what we get from Hollywood is either mindless, glitzy slug fests, or over politicized dreck, this is a film that's simply trying to help, in some small way, build bridges of understanding between groups where understanding can be hard to attain. I have the pleasure of knowing several friends who have experience with Asperger's and autism, and one in particular assured me that this film provides a reasonably authentic portrayal of what it means to live with Asperger's. Is it 100% accurate? I don't think so. Just like me, the crew only knows what they know, and they can only speak to that which they know, and maybe try to learn along the way. However, it makes an attempt, and it tries to do so in a respectful, and empathetic fashion. I can get behind that. Now, that's not to say that it isn't without its flaws. There are plot points that seem a bit forced, or contrived, and we never do find out what happened to all of the other people who were on the bus that crashed. However, from the broad perspective, this is a feel good film that paces well, is well acted, and that is mostly put together well. It leaves you rooting for Wendy as she overcomes her various struggles in her pursuit to fulfill her dream, and that's inspiring. Is it realistic? Again, I couldn't say, but I like to think that we all have within us the capacity to become more than we are. If you're looking for a feel good film that's appropriate for the whole family, minus one F-bomb, then this is a film for you! It's got heart, and it's got Star Trek at that heart, and you're sure to get a good bit of enjoyment from it! Stick around to see what we're scheming for next week!
The movie begins with a space sequence as the opening credits roll and vague, sometimes unintelligible dialog. Finally, we see two figures in undeniably Star Trek EVA suits on a desert planet struggling. We then cut to Dakota Fanning, playing Wendy, typing on her laptop. We watch as Wendy meets with her counselor, Scottie. We're also shown that Wendy lives in an assisted living home for higher functioning people with certain mental challenges. These fine folks receive regular counselling and the structure that they need to act self-sufficiently in the world. Wendy walks Scottie through her daily routine, which is at times humorous, and at other times just a little uncomfortable, but it gives us a lot of insight into who Wendy is, and how she deals with her own personal challenges day-to-day. We're meant to gather that Wendy has Asperger's, and that kind of serves as the main premise for the film. We're made aware through dialog, that Wendy is a Star Trek fan who is working on a script for a writing contest that Paramount is holding. The grand prize is $100,000, and Wendy is determined to win it.
Wendy goes to work that day, and a co-worker gives her a mixed CD of cool music. She appears to blow off the gesture, but this is where one has to remember that she may not necessarily know how to respond to the gesture. We further learn that Wendy has a sister named Audrey, who is played by Alice Eve, who is going to visit soon. Audrey has a newborn daughter and we're shown that she and her husband are preparing to move from their house, which we later learn is Audrey's and Wendy's childhood home. Audrey watches a video of she and Wendy learning how to set a table. Wendy does well until the stimulation overwhelms her and she throws a tantrum. We also see Audrey successfully teaching Wendy how to play a song on the piano. It's not a drawn out sequence, but it effectively shows the ups and downs Audrey experienced growing up with her sister. The visit happens, and Audrey attempts to converse with Wendy. However, Wendy is fixated with the contest as her script needs to be mailed that day, and she wants to go home with Audrey. Wendy sees herself as self-reliant enough to leave, but Audrey worries what might happen with a baby at home, and the conversation turns south quickly as Wendy falls into a tantrum. Scottie has found a way to help Wendy calm down, and walks Wendy through this exercise. Audrey leaves, and it's one of those scenes where the actress holds her composure until its deemed an 'appropriate' place to lose it. I commend actors that can pull this off in a realistic fashion because I imagine it's pretty difficult. But we can tell that Audrey is shaken, and crushed by the way the visit turned out.
Wendy remains upset as she had hoped to go back to live with her sister now that she had learned to take more responsibility upon herself, and she retreats to her room to cool off. She realizes that she's missed her window of opportunity to mail her script and becomes really upset. She begins to think of ways that she might manage to still be able to mail it, but it's Martin Luther King Jr day that Monday, it's already Sunday, and the scripts have to be delivered by 5 pm Tuesday so the USPS is out of the question. Concluding that, Wendy resolves to deliver the script on her own. She lives in the Oakland area, and Paramount Studios is LA, which is about 400 miles so it's not unreasonable to assume that taking a car ride, it might be a day trip, or two, but that wouldn't make for a very entertaining film at all. Wendy checks her notebook to see when sunrise is that day because she can't leave the house until sunrise, and then lays down to watch the clock. In preparation for leaving, she grabs a sandwich, and a few other things before heading out the door.
On her way down the street, Wendy's dog Pete follows here incessantly, and refuses to go home so Wendy puts him in her bag and soldiers on. Next, we're treated to humorous scene of Wendy trying to figure out if her regular bus goes to LA. It doesn't and two drivers simply tell her that, but in films, the third time is always the charm, and the third drive directs her to terminal where she can buy a ticket to LA. He's even considerate enough to get her headed in the right direction when she takes off the opposite way. Wendy has to cross Market Street, which she's been told never to do under any circumstances however, the bus terminal is on the other side of the street. She bravely crosses, and that's when we know that we've reached the road trip portion of the film! She finds the bus with the LA label in the sign thingy and the driver informs her that a ticket is needed to ride the bus. Wendy begins to write that down in her notebook, and the driver tells her to go buy a ticket. Wendy does so and comes back with the ticket to ride only to see a sticker prohibiting animals from riding the bus. Wendy does her best to hide Pete while giving the ticket to the driver and taking a seat. The trip starts off pretty well. We see Wendy enjoying listening to her music on her iPod. She's even imported the songs from the mix CD that her co-worker, Nemo gave her!
Difficulties arise when Pete begins to whine. Wendy realizes that he has to pee, but there's no where for dog to pee on a bus. Wendy goes to talk to the bus driver who informs her that there's a stop an hour up the road where Pete, who is just a friend, and totally not a dog, can pee when they arrive, but Pete can't hold it and so he pees on the bus. The bus driver kicks both of them off the bus at the next stop, and it's out in the middle of nowhere. There isn't even a terminal anywhere near by! Wendy starts huffing it in the general direction of LA, and stumbles upon a farmer's market of some sort. It's closed due to drought, but Wendy ventures in as she sees a hose from which she and Pete could get some water. After hydrating, Wendy stumbles upon a young woman with an infant. There's a short conversation about infants, and Wendy's tantrums in her younger years. The young woman tells Wendy that she and her boyfriend are headed to LA, and that they would be happy to give her a ride. Wendy accepts, but needs to use the restroom first. As Wendy is using said facilities, the young woman roots through Wendy's backpack and steals Wendy's money! Wendy approaches the boyfriend's truck, and the boyfriend rips the lanyard thing from Wendy's neck. He wants her iPod, but her notebook is also on that thing. Wendy shrieks plaintively for the woman to give back the notebook, which fortunately the woman does.
Wendy is left without a ride, and without her iPod, and we get a good understanding of the importance of that blasphemous piece of junk (Zune for life!) almost immediately. Wendy has reached a town, and there are loud noises everywhere! There are dogs barking, motorcycles revving, people yelling, and all sorts of things overloading Wendy's senses. It's pretty apparent by the way that they play the scene that the iPod was meant to help Wendy tune out the din that the world offers up non-stop in order to help her not feel overwhelmed by it all. Now she's having to learn to adjust to not having her coping mechanism. Already having eaten her sandwich and apparently feeling hungry again, Wendy stops into a convenience store to buy some food. It's here, preparing to buy something, that she finally realizes that her money is missing. She grabs a bag of candy bars and asks the attendant how much the bag costs. He tells her that it costs a dollar a bar. She begins going through the math to add up to a total, but then the coolest grandma besides yours and mine steps in to thoroughly chastise the man for being a douche. He tells her the real price, and she pays. The grandma gets Wendy something to drink and they sit and talk.
The grandma asks who is taking care of Wendy, and Wendy tells her that it's more of a solo mission. Grandma feels like that that isn't right and someone should be taking care of Wendy. We learn that grandma has a grandson who also has Asperger's and that grandma is on her way back to LA after having visited with the grandson. Grandma invites Wendy to ride on the bus that the nursing home used to transport a group, and they take off. There's a fun scene where Wendy tells grandma all about the script that was written and why Wendy's on the trek to LA. The grandma doesn't quite get it, but tells Wendy that her grandson would love it, and that Wendy is pretty cool. Unfortunately, some genius decided to let one of the old people drive the bus and he nods off and crashes the bus. Wendy is knocked out and when she comes to, she's at a hospital. At this point, it's important to share that Scottie and Audrey have been searching frantically to find Wendy. They were able to track her to the bus station in Oakland, and the bus company told them where the driver kicked Wendy off the bus, but they come up empty beyond that. It's not until Wendy is admitted to the hospital that Scottie tracks her down, and only because Scottie was calling all of the hospitals between Oakland and LA. And then only because one of the nurses told Scottie that they had taken on a dog wearing as Star Trek uniform. It's more of a sweater with a science patch on it, but it's adorable! That's the piece of the puzzle that helps Scottie to finally track down Wendy.
Once Wendy is finally coherent, it's morning, and the sun is up. She's informed that she'll be moved to a different floor, probably to begin discharge procedures, but she doesn't want to be moved, she just wants to leave. She protests a bit, but is met with firm resistance from the nurse. She then complains that she has to pee really bad. The nurse protests at first, but then capitulates. While Wendy's in the restroom, the nurse tells some really disturbing stories from his youth that are pretty inappropriate to be sharing with anyone other than a trusted confidante or a therapist, to say the least of a random patient that you just met. Wendy takes quite a while in the restroom, and the nurse lets himself in. He sees an open window and no one in the room and takes off, yelling to all the other nurses that Wendy has climbed out of a window. However, Wendy had actually hidden in the cupboards under the sink, and once everyone takes off looking for her, she gets out, dresses, grabs her bags, leaves the sweater for Pete, and gets out of there. For some reason, her script is not secure at this point, and I guess because the plot called for it, she drops all of the loose pages. She tries to gather them all, but the nurses find her and are closing in so she takes what she's got and flees.
She's distraught over the loss of her script, but she finds some blank paper in a trash bin and starts writing. There's a scene where Scottie and her son are driving to retrieve Wendy, and the son helps Scottie to better understand Wendy's obsession with Star Trek a little. Scottie had never realized that Star Trek being about the character meant that there were many facets of human existence that are explored, and that Spock in particular struggles with emotions, and coming from a culture that looks down upon them, but feeling them all the same. When the two arrive, the find Wendy gone, and the remaining pages of her script on the ground. The son gathers them all up and the search continues. Meanwhile, Wendy has found the bus depot and attempts to get another ticket to LA. She's informed that there's not another bus until the morning. So Wendy asks if she can sit in the depot. The cashier agrees to that and Wendy works to bang out transcribing more of her lost script. Unfortunately, this bus depot closes and the cashier lady asks Wendy to leave. Wendy asks if she can stay on a bench out front, and the lady agrees to that a little bit warily, probably because it wasn't the best part of town.
Wendy awakes the next day, Tuesday, and attempts to 'shower' and do some of her usual routine. Then she attempts to buy another ticket, but she's out of money. The cashier turns her away, and so she finds the bus going to LA and sneaks into the luggage hold. We see the bus being unloaded in LA, and Wendy sneaking away. Next we see Wendy walking down a street. Two cops recognize her from a missing persons report and attempt to approach her. Wendy gets spooked and runs. One cop starts to take off after Wendy, but the one played by Patton Oswalt figures it's easier to give chase in their cruiser. They track Wendy to an apartment building and, in one of my personal favorite scenes, Patton Oswalt confronts Wendy, in Klingon! The two have a conversation in the language of warriors as Patton Oswalt attempts to gain enough of Wendy's trust to get her to the police station. It's a really cool scene. The partner has no idea what to make of things, which just adds to the levity of the scene. Wendy agrees to come with them, and Patton asks her if she speaks English. She tells him that she does.
Wendy is finally reunited with Scottie and Audrey, but she's also still determined to get her script in. As they're already there, everyone piles into Audrey's SUV and they head to Paramount Studios. Wendy takes her script onto the lot and looks for the building where the ads told her to send the script. She does, and it's the mail room. She approaches a man at a desk and tells him that she's arrived to turn in her script. It's almost 5 pm, and she's down to the wire, but still on time. The man tells her that scripts have to be postmarked and delivered by the mail service. He gets pretty snooty about it and asks for someone to call security. Wendy initially seems to back down to leave, but then rehearses a plan under her breath. She goes into an outburst and tries to explain to the man how hard it is to write a script. He's still unfazed and so she asks him if he knows who she is. He laughs as he does not, and she barrels by him and drops her script in the slot that's conveniently marked 'Star Trek scripts', and then she flees. She meets back up with Audrey and Scottie to inform them that her mission was a success. They go home.
We montage a bit at the end as we see Wendy give Nemo a mixed CD as a return gesture of affection. We learn that Wendy's script was not chosen, but the letter is really kindly worded, which I guess is pretty cool, and then we see Wendy visit Audrey and meet her niece for the first time. Pete even shows up, which is meant to insinuate that Wendy has been allowed to move back in with her sister. Then roll credits.
Now, you should know by now that this synopsis is not comprehensive by any stretch. I like to leave a bit of mystery for you guys to experience should you decide to check these things out for yourselves, but that covers the broad strokes. What I really enjoy about this film is how socially responsible it's attempting to be. In a world where 99% of what we get from Hollywood is either mindless, glitzy slug fests, or over politicized dreck, this is a film that's simply trying to help, in some small way, build bridges of understanding between groups where understanding can be hard to attain. I have the pleasure of knowing several friends who have experience with Asperger's and autism, and one in particular assured me that this film provides a reasonably authentic portrayal of what it means to live with Asperger's. Is it 100% accurate? I don't think so. Just like me, the crew only knows what they know, and they can only speak to that which they know, and maybe try to learn along the way. However, it makes an attempt, and it tries to do so in a respectful, and empathetic fashion. I can get behind that. Now, that's not to say that it isn't without its flaws. There are plot points that seem a bit forced, or contrived, and we never do find out what happened to all of the other people who were on the bus that crashed. However, from the broad perspective, this is a feel good film that paces well, is well acted, and that is mostly put together well. It leaves you rooting for Wendy as she overcomes her various struggles in her pursuit to fulfill her dream, and that's inspiring. Is it realistic? Again, I couldn't say, but I like to think that we all have within us the capacity to become more than we are. If you're looking for a feel good film that's appropriate for the whole family, minus one F-bomb, then this is a film for you! It's got heart, and it's got Star Trek at that heart, and you're sure to get a good bit of enjoyment from it! Stick around to see what we're scheming for next week!
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