Maya is so gifted that she’s not only St. (Adam says his dad split over Adam’s illness, which he considered “a buzzkill for his creativity.”) Walton Goggins ( Ant-Man and the Wasp) is nicely ambiguous as Paul, Beth’s new boyfriend, whom Adam resents without in any way pining for his deadbeat dad. Their quarrels are among the film’s most true-to-life elements. Molly Parker ( House of Cards) is utterly credible as Adam’s mother, Beth, a constant advocate for her son whose biggest challenge may be persuading him that they really are on the same team. I would have liked more of a third act for her. Maya could have been a magic girlfriend existing to solve Adam’s problems, but the story gives her issues and secrets of that go some way toward giving her an arc of her own. Agatha, where he meets brainy, jaded Maya (Russell) and a taciturn priest named Father Patrick (Andy Garcia), whom Adam mostly encounters in the confessional, despite not believing in God. His hopes to get his life back on track involve a convergence of two paths: an experimental drug study and a Catholic school named for St. His dreams of culinary school, though, are imperiled by his first psychotic break, an incident with supernatural horror-movie resonances that inconveniently strikes in chemistry class during his senior year of high school. John Nash did math Adam cooks and finds liberation in the kitchen. One of the major themes is that Adam has an illness but the illness is not him, though he discovers that attempts to control the illness may have consequences for parts of himself that he cares about. The film also echoes A Beautiful Mind in the protagonist’s struggle between the liberating and debilitating effects of medication. Like Russell Crowe’s John Nash in A Beautiful Mind, he’s orbited by a cast of supporting characters that only he can see and hear, representing various aspects of his psyche.

Adam Petrazelli (Plummer), a high-school senior, has trouble knowing what’s real and what isn’t. But compelling performances elevate the sometimes familiar material, along with a gratifyingly frank, therapeutic depiction of mental illness, in this case schizophrenia. I was reminded at times of The Fault in Our Stars, another YA adaptation about illness with low-key religious themes and a central relationship that morphs from platonic friendship into romance. Words on Bathroom Walls, based on the young-adult novel by Julia Walton and directed by Thor Freudenthal ( Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters Diary of a Wimpy Kid), is predictably more conventional than those films. Each of these young actors had a brilliant starring role in an extraordinary, structurally audacious recent movie, Lean on Pete for Plummer and Waves for Russell. SDG Original source: National Catholic RegisterĬharlie Plummer and Taylor Russell in the same movie is almost too good to be true.

Julia walton words on bathroom walls