Asperger’s Syndrome is a high-functioning form of autism and those who suffer from it tend to have difficulties understanding normal social interaction.  Writer/director Max Mayer’s new film Adam is about one such person.  Adam Raki is about thirty years old and attending his father’s funeral as the film opens.  Although Adam has never really lived on his own, he does just fine taking care of himself, even if he does eat macaroni and cheese for every meal.

Adam’s routine is interrupted when he loses his job as an electrical engineer for a toy company, and he is upset when an attorney advises him that he will need to sell his apartment that he can no longer afford.  Aided by an old friend of his father’s, Adam applies to a large number of jobs, but he is afraid that his condition will never allow him to succeed though an interview.  Fortunately, a young woman has just moved into the apartment above him.

Beth is a smart and beautiful young woman who is recovering from a failed relationship.  When she first meets Adam, she is intrigued by his good looks and what she initially sees as his eccentricities.  Despite a few misunderstandings that cause some brief hiccups, a romantic relationship develops between the two and she is able to help him through the interview process.

Their relationship doesn’t sit well with Beth’s father, however, who has always dreamed of something different for his little girl.  Beth has always cherished her father and his opinions, but a new criminal case against him shows her that he has not always been the man she has trusted him to be.

The film opens with Beth reciting a story she was told as a child about a prince who came down from the heavens to teach a lost pilot about love, and how she always thought she was the prince, but upon meeting Adam she realized she was the pilot.  Unfortunately, the script doesn’t ever seem to come back to bring this statement to fruition.

I got the feeling from the film that Beth’s attraction to Adam was based less on “cute” moments like him showing off his living room planetarium and taking her to see the raccoons that live in Central Park, and more on the fact that due to the Asperger’s, Adam is brutally honest whereas the other men in Beth’s life are not.  When they meet, she has just recently split up with her boyfriend who cheated on her, and as the trial proceeds, she learns more about her beloved father’s dishonest past.

The movie is not without its charms and I enjoyed the performance of Hugh Dancy as Adam.  He is convincing as a young man with Asperger’s, while still managing to show off his intrinsic charm that has previously been used in romantic comedies like Confessions of a Shopaholic.  I also thought Rose Byrne was very good as Beth, but at times her character felt a little too good to be true.

The movie is charming and manages to hold the audiences attention for a full 100 minutes.  It also manages to avoid the “Rain Man in love” trap that it could have very easily fallen into.

Adam is rated PG-13 for “thematic material, sexual content and language.”  Overall, I didn’t seem much in this film that I would consider harsh and it probably could have survived with a PG rating.

Courtesy of a local publicist, Jeff attended a promotional screening of Adam.