Rory O'Shea Was Here and The Cake Eaters (No Spoilers)

I really hadn't planned on doing these two together, but they're too similar and splitting them into two separate reviews would be a bit repetitive.

Rory O'Shea Was Here (a.k.a. Inside I'm Dancing) focuses on Rory O'Shea, who has muscular distrophy, and Michael Connolly, who has cerebral palsy. The two gents meet in a home for the disabled, Michael being an excellent resident who's always played by the rules while Rory is the new guy who turns the place upside down. Rory repeatedly attempts to get government funding to live on his own, but is repeatedly denied. Michael, never having considered a life outside the home, applies for the same funding and is approved. He decides to make Rory his roommate, getting extra funding for him as an "interpreter," since Rory is the only person who can understand Michael's troublesome speech. With their new caregiver, the beautiful Siobhán, Rory and Michael try to live life to the fullest, until it ultimately backfires.

In The Cake Eaters, young Georgia is suffering from a genetic disorder (Friedreich's Ataxia) which causes serious nerve deterioration and will cut her life very short. Not surprisingly, she too is determined to live life to the fullest, but the fullest to small town Georgia means cutting off all her hair, riding around on a Moped and losing her virginity to Pyro from the X-Men movies after knowing him for 36 hours.

To be honest, both stories are kind of boring. The only thing saving Rory O'Shea from being a waste of time was the far superior performances. Physically speaking, James McAvoy didn't have to do much to portray a wheelchair-bound Rory with muscular distropy, except not move, but emotionally speaking, he is off the charts. Steven Robertson matched McAvoy's emotional state and brought with him an excellent physical depiction of Michael's CP (and yes, I have met people with CP before). The performances of these two gentlemen make Rory O'Shea intersting enough to make it to the end credits, even though the story is barely passable and very predictable.

Unfortunately, Kristen Stewart forgot that she still had to put forth an emotional effort along with a physical performance as Georgia. Though she had the shaky movements and slurred speech that is common with Friedreich's Ataxia (according to Wikipedia), her completely lifeless expression did little to make Georgia a real person, instead of Kristen just looking drunk. At least I wasn't subjected to her constant lip-biting and rapid eye-blinking, which is her normal "go-to" for emoting.

There's a bit more to the story of The Cake Eaters with some of Pyro's family issues, but in the end the entire film tried too hard to be indie, just for the sake of being indie.

I really can't recommend either film, but I can't recommend The Cake Eaters more than I can't recommend Rory O'Shea Was Here, but just barely...if that makes any sense.

Ratings:
Rory O'Shea Was Here

The Cake Eaters