Written by Barry Berman and Lesley McNeil
Directed by Jeremy S. Chechik

Not every film has to blow things up or have laugh-out-loud, absurd comedy.  Sometimes, a film that’s sweet and poignant can touch your heart in a way you didn’t expect.  In this day and age, where so many parents have children with special needs, the film Benny and Joon is all the more poignant.

Aidan Quinn is Benny, an auto mechanic who’s the sole caretaker of his sister, Joon (portrayed by Mary Stuart Masterson) who has a few issues.  We are introduced to her through an emergency phone call she makes to her brother at work.  The emergency?  They are almost out of peanut butter.

Benny is determined to keep them together and take care of his sister (their parents are deceased), even as a social worker (portrayed by CCH Pounder) advocates for him to put her somewhere she can get the level of care she needs.

One night, when Joon is playing a game of poker with friends, she loses, and the stakes are that she has to take her opponent’s cousin off his hands.  Sam (portrayed by Johnny Depp) is a bit on the odd side himself.  He completely emulates Buster Keaton from the way he dresses to how he walks.  However, he doesn’t seem to have the emotional difficulties that plague Joon.

As the relationship between Joon and Sam grows, Benny seems to also be able to entertain thoughts of a relationship of his own with the former actress, now a waitress, Ruthie (portrayed by Julianne Moore).  However, when Joon and Sam become intimate, Benny doesn’t handle it very well.  His reaction is the catalyst for a breakdown in all of their lives.

The acting here is incredible.  This is really a slice-of-life film of sorts, and to really draw the audience into the story, the actors have to become the roles.  I can’t say any of them missed.  From Quinn and Masterson on down, the performances are fantastic.  Quinn is excellent as the long-suffering brother who has long denied his own life for the very real obligation he feels toward his sister.  What is incredible is that he never once seems to resent it; it seems that this is just a natural part of Benny’s life that he long ago accepted.  The issue in the film really seems to be Benny letting go of the obligation and having to live his own life, apart from taking care of his sister.

Masterson is marvelous as Joon.  She’s got something of a quiet intensity that occasionally explodes in fits of emotional frustration.  She sees the world a bit differently and does an excellent job allowing the audience to peek through at her version of the world.  At times, she’s lashing out, feeling that the world is somehow wrong because she doesn’t fit in it.  She’s got some incredible creativity and moments where it seems she’s close to being as “normal” as the rest of us, but these are usually followed by periods of intense frustration that include lashing out at everyone and everything.

Depp is incredible.  If you’ve watched his career at all over the years, that’s really not a surprise.  Here, though, his performance is restrained enough to distinguish him from the other characters he’s portrayed with enough hints at the potential that was yet to be realized in 1993.  Just watching him sit across the table from Benny when he and Joon are about to confess their involvement – the expressions on his face are wonderful.  The same is true at the beginning of the film when Benny is about to leave Sam and Joon alone for the first time, and he has a conversation with them sitting in the bathtub.  Sam seems to know exactly what he’s doing and how what he’s doing affects people, which is the major difference between his actions and Joon’s.

Director Jeremia Chechik did a terrific job.  The commentary with him is great, and he makes it a point that he didn’t want to get too specific about many parts of the film, as he wanted people to be able to identify with it.  He deliberately isn’t specific about Joon’s illness, nor where or when the film takes place.  Chechik wanted the audience to feel this could be them, or happening in their community.

My biggest disappointment comes with the ending of the film, though.  It seems like a Hollywood fairy-tale happy ending instead of a realistic conclusion to the situation.  It was already proven that Sam cannot handle Joon’s illness, even with the best of intentions in his heart.  For the resolution to be that somehow, with their moving in together, they will take care of each other, it felt like it didn’t make sense.  It felt like it was a convenient conclusion to the story.

Still, I found Benny and Joon to be a sweet and poignant film about the two characters in the title, with a healthy dose of comedy courtesy of Johnny Depp.  I know I can see shades of my two special needs children in Joon’s life, and that makes it all the more relevant as our society must deal with the implications of 1 in 100 adults one day affected by autism.


SPECIAL FEATURES:

• Audio Commentary with Director Jeremiah Chechik
• Deleted Scenes
• Trailers