54445: Ezra

Commit to the bit. It’s good advice for a comedian, unless that comedian is considering kidnapping his child from his ex-wife’s custody and driving across the country with him, as in Ezra.

Oh, right. Spoiler alert. And I guess trigger warning.

Let’s just get it out of the way up front: in Ezra, a comedian kidnaps his child from his ex-wife’s totally legal custody and then drives him from Hoboken to Los Angeles. Promotional materials for the movie describe it thusly: “Comedian Max co-parents autistic son Ezra with ex-wife Jenna. Faced with crucial decisions about Ezra's future, Max and Ezra go on a life-changing cross-country road trip.”

I don’t know if “go on a life-changing cross-country road trip” is how I would describe kidnapping a child in the middle of the night and taking him across a goddamned continent, while his freaked out mother does everything in her power to get him back. I guess technically it is a life-changing cross-country road trip, in that lots of lives were changed. But, then again, you could technically say that about the main plot of Saving Private Ryan or Fury Road.

The narrative bait-and-switch is quite surprising, given that Ezra positions itself, from the first scene, as a meditation on honesty. The film opens with Max, the comedian, on stage and expounding on how dishonest we all are, how no one says what they mean—doctors in particular. (Side note: I get the impression that Max isn’t big on vaccines, if you know what I mean)

Honesty is a theme the film comes back to, time and again, particularly as it relates to Ezra, who has no filter. He is perpetually honest, saying exactly what he thinks and feels. Max calls it Ezra’s “super power,” and it sets him apart from a world of people who speak in sugar-coated fibs and metaphors, such as calling a federal crime a “life-changing cross-country road trip.”

The script, written by Tony Spiridakis, quickly fills out the family for us: Max is a middling comic with anger issues who lives in Hoboken; his ex-wife, Jenna, is successful, capable and has full custody of Ezra; Ezra is a young boy with ASD, which is hinted at as being the reason Max and Jenna split up. Jenna also has a silver-fox lawyer boyfriend, played by director Tony Goldwyn, and Max lives with his father, Stan, a cantankerous doorman and former chef, played cantankerously by Robert De Niro.

In addition to honesty, as noted above, Ezra is also concerned with fatherhood, family, toxicity, male ego, and just generally figuring out how to stop being so shitty all the time. To explore these themes, we get to ride along with Max as he makes a series of increasingly terrible decisions and then runs away from all the consequences. Max is, in a word, shitty. But he’s the kind of shitty person who inspires love and loyalty from the people in his life. You know the type. “Oh, yeah, he seems like a real asshole at first. You’ve just gotta get to know him!” What they’re really saying is, “You just need to get used to dealing with this asshole’s shitty behavior, and by the time you do, you’ll be so accustomed to him that you’ll mistake your familiarity for affection.”

Early in the film, for example, Max has to choose between an important audition at the Comedy Cellar, or taking his son to a The Big Lebowski interactive screening. He can’t do both, because he has to get his son back home early so he can go to bed. And because routines are important to kids, especially kids on the spectrum. So, naturally he breaks his promise to his ex-wife, drags his son to the Comedy Cellar for a late night show and then home to Hoboken, most likely around midnight. What a scamp.

I don’t want to belabor the plot of the movie, but you get the idea. Max is faced with many, many opportunities throughout the narrative to make adult choices and he keeps making the worst, most selfish decision possible. He’s driven by ego and pride, essentially. Max cannot bring himself to admit that his son is just fine the way he is, and doesn’t need to be fixed or changed. He refuses to admit that kidnapping his son from the boy’s mother was a terrible idea (even after finding out he’s the subject of an AMBER Alert), and he can’t accept that he’s the problem.

“Hi, it’s me. I’m the problem, it’s me.”

This “road trip” could be an opportunity for Max to burn away his ego and drain the toxicity out of his masculinity, but it’s really not. He keeps pushing ahead, being a shitty, shitty father and mistreating his kid in various ways. And instead of dropping his bullshit, he keeps going west and relies on the support of old friends who happen to be conveniently located along the highway between Hoboken and Los Angeles and also don’t mind aiding and abetting a kidnapping in order to help this absolute knob of a person.

Oh, and Max landed a spot on Jimmy Kimmel, despite an audition set that could most charitably be described as “solo group therapy.” So that’s really why the trip is continuing, though Max will be goddamned if he admits that to himself. For a movie about honesty, they’ve sure painted Max as one deceitful motherfucker.

There is some honesty in the movie, delivered by characters around the periphery. However, the moment of greatest clarity comes as Max is attempting to evade the AMBER Alert and drives their car into the forest, wrecking it in the process. Ezra is understandably sick of it all at this point and questions why they’re even on this trip. Max chases him through the forest, shouts at him about how much Ezra means to him, and how important he is to Max, and calls him his superhero/mojo man/etc. These are ways Max has described Ezra throughout the movie, of course, but all Ezra wants to be called is “son.” He screams at his father that he’s not Max’s friend, or good luck charm, or anything else. He’s Max’s son, and Max is his dad.

And that’s kind of the point of the movie. Ezra isn’t an extension of Max. He’s his own person, and Max doesn’t get to choose what kind of person he is. I honestly thought, “this is it, this is where the movie turns around; Max is about to do the best thing for his son and take him home.” Except Ezra isn’t that kind of movie. Of course Max kept right on doing the same bullshit that had gotten him this far.

It is a shame that Ezra tries so hard to get us to identify with Max, and to see the good in what he’s doing, because he thoroughly sucks. It’s not terribly surprising, given that the screenwriter is himself the father of a child with ASD, and wrote this script in part to work through some of the same issues Max grapples with in the story. As far as I know, however, Spiridakis never committed any felonies in order to find peace with his son, but I’m sure he made some questionable, regrettable decisions in raising his son. Every parent does. Most parents learn from their regrets and grow and change and become better without involving the FBI. Not Max. Ultimately, he does manage to become a better father, but only after being compelled to by law enforcement.

What is frustrating, at least to me, is the amount of time we don’t spend with Jenna, played by Rose Byrne, who turns out to be an absolute badass mother. She’s placed in an impossible situation and never gives up, showing steely resolve and resourcefulness in the face of one of the most terrifying scenarios a parent is likely to face. I wish we had spent more time with her, particularly after she picks up Stan and presses him into service in tracking down their respective sons. They have a wonderful chemistry, and I enjoyed the feeling of rooting for someone on screen, rather than emotionally separating myself from a character who I increasingly saw as a worst-case-scenario version of myself.

And I recognize that movies do not need to have a likable protagonist or whatever, but it’s a strange choice to have a compelling and very likable co-star working in direct opposition to your main protagonist. I guess it’s also a strange choice to spend this much time and energy thinking about it. Anyway, you can skip this one. I suggest you instead go watch Byrne’s earlier work on Damages and check out De Niro in just about anything he did without Ben Stiller.