Up until now, it seems like the only movies Apple TV+ has come out with have been decent-at-best movies Tom Hanks made that didn’t go to theaters for COVID-related reasons. Honestly, as the one person with the service that doesn’t watch Ted Lasso–I am sure it’s fine, I just haven’t gotten around to it for one reason or another–I can’t say that I am quite sure why the service even exists right now. It doesn’t have much of a clear identity, and the only reason I signed up in the first place was for a package deal that included Paramount+ and Showtime for about the same overall price as Netflix. And at least one of them can give me Star Trek.
But somehow, Apple TV+ got a movie that is up for Best Picture. Everyone I know who has seen it has loved it. So, why not?
Ruby Rossi (Emilia Jones) is the only hearing member of her otherwise all-deaf family. When she isn’t going to school, she’s working on the family fishing boat and often acting as sign language interpreter for her father Frank (Troy Kotsur) and brother Leo (Daniel Durant) while her mother Jackie (Marlee Matlin) stays at home. No doubt owing to her time being consumed by her family’s needs, Ruby isn’t doing so well at school. However, she does love music, and when she sees her crush Miles (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) signing up for choir, she opts to do the same. However, Ruby is very self-conscious in part because of her family’s generally embarrassing antics, even if it’s rarely less embarrassing than anything any other teenage girl has ever had to deal with, and memories of how she was teased due to how she talked back when she first started school. But her choir teacher Mr. V (Eugenio Derbez) thinks Ruby has a very good singing voice. She could even get a full scholarship to a music college if she just commits herself.
Of course, committing herself to music has a wide range of problems for her. Her mother is somewhat offended and doesn’t want her to go because she sees the family as a community, owing to her own poor relationship with her own mother. Her brother is actually very supportive in his own way as he wants to prove he can get things done without her acting as a translator, and her father falls somewhere in the middle of the other two. Ruby’s own sense of family obligation means she can be late or outright miss personal lessons with Mr. V, and her family is starting up a new fish co-op with a lot of other hearing people, and Ruby may be the only one who can translate. Can Ruby achieve her dreams with or without her family’s support?
OK, I think I get why this is up for Best Picture. It’s a great movie, and the cast is a lot of fun. Some strong language aside and a few other minor things, and this could easily be an all-ages family drama, but a well-done one. Seeing as how Kotsur, Durant, and Matlin are all actually deaf, that does offer perhaps an extra level of authenticity to the movie, and Jones gives a winning performance as someone who loves her family but also wants to achieve something that, in many ways, she can’t share with them. Likewise, the way her family depends on her, expecting her to be places even when she has other obligations, is the sort of thing that puts her in a real bind.
It helps that writer/director Sian Heder finds some interesting ways to show how the extended Rossi’s have to deal with the world. Maybe they can’t hear Ruby sing, but they can observe how people react to her singing. And as much as Ruby’s issues are perhaps at the forefront of the movie, the way her parents both isolate themselves from the rest of the fishing community doesn’t exactly help them much either. As such, this is a sweet movie about a family of four learning to branch out a bit despite the fact 75% of them can’t hear anything. Is it likely to win Best Picture? I kinda doubt it, but it may be one of the sweeter movies up for the top prize this year.
Grade: A
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