Ruby, the main character of this film, has a lot of the problems typical of her age. She’s a high school senior and we can all relate to the slate of struggles she’s dealing with: her relationship with her mother, her role in the family, self-doubt & anxiety about the future, all of the standard late teenage issues. Those things are only exacerbated because she is a CODA, a “Child of Deaf Adults,” the only member of her family who can hear. And, as if that wouldn’t be a complex enough issue as it is, she has a passion for singing. “If I was blind, would you want to paint?” her mother snaps at her sarcastically at one point.
I’ll admit to kind of struggling with this movie at first. At about thirty minutes in, I remember thinking, “Is this even a drama?” It really felt more like a comedy and a surprisingly raunchy one at that. There’s an actual sex scene, though not at all graphic, played for laughs at one point and if you’ve ever wondered how deaf people talk about safe sex, well, that’s a scene in here too and every time you think that one’s over, it just keeps going. I just wasn’t really connecting to the film on this level and I’m still feel like some of that stuff doesn’t really work. But I think this movie wants to establish right from the jump that this isn’t going to be a stodgy, super-serious “disability movie,” if you know what I mean. This may be Oscar-bait to some degree, but it’s not your grandma’s Oscar-bait; WE’VE got a comedic scene about testicles, damn it!
I honestly respect that quite a bit and, even if some of the humor didn’t really land with me, I think it’s coming from a good place, a place of demystifying these characters and putting them in the real world. The family at the heart of this movie is essentially working class (with a pretty big house, I do have to say) and they smoke weed and use profanity and have sex. And, as the film progresses, the story does become more dramatic and the characters who at first seemed a little under-written to me end up unfolding and revealing a lot of depth. Troy Kotsur plays the father of the family and I initially thought he was giving a very one-note, purely comedic performance that I wasn’t really connecting with; but by the end of the film, he ends up giving the best performance in the movie in my opinion, a performance of real subtlety and emotional sensitivity. He really kind of breaks your heart by the end. The movie as a whole really does. The performances are a big part of why it works as well as it does; the story doesn’t have a lot of surprises exactly, but the performances root everything in emotional reality. Emilia Jones gives a really star-making performance in the lead, including pulling off a climactic musical performance that feels natural, emotional and yet also just awkward enough to feel real. Those kinds of moments are extremely hard to nail and she kills it. Marlee Matlin and Daniel Durant round out the central family with really good, vibrant performances and Ferdia Walsh-Peelo (who you may remember as the lead in John Carney’s Sing Street a few years ago) brings some real heart to a small supporting role.
Ultimately, I think the movie isn’t perfect. I respect the tonal juggling it wants to go for, making comedic scenes about sex coexist with heartbreaking emotional bits. It doesn’t get all of those shifts right and, particularly in that first half-hour, some of the comedy just feels a little forced. But by the end of the movie, I was prepared to forgive most of the missteps along the way because I was genuinely moved. The performances end up bringing the characters fully to live as real people and I really believed in the characters by the time the movie was over and I have to say I got pretty misty-eyed a couple of times in that last half-hour. It’s got some great, really well-executed scenes in that list: a recital performance, an audition, a swimming at the quarry bonding moment. The fact that I could shorthand those scenes in that way and you kind of immediately get what I’m talking about underlines the fact that this isn’t the most surprisingly plotted movie of all time. But the emotional honesty is compelling; I mean, I would have said you’d never get me with a “young love develops while teenagers swim” scenes again, but that scene here is really, really good because of the performances particularly. It’s not a perfect movie by any means, but when it’s good, it’s very good and it’s good, really, most of the time. Add in the fact that it is telling a story rarely even attempted on screen and it would be hard to hold this movie’s flaws against it. Its heart is in the right place and if CODA is about anything, it’s about how that is the most important thing. 3 ½ stars.
tl;dr – doesn’t quite nail all the tonal shifts it goes for, but great performances all around and a mostly strong script add up to a heart-tugging and entertaining movie. 3 ½ stars.