[7]

The Boy Who Could Fly is a goofy movie, but it has a lot of heart. Lucy Deakins stars as Milly, a fourteen-year-old girl who has just moved to a new town after her father committed suicide. She discovers her next door neighbor is an autistic boy named Eric (Jay Underwood) who is always sitting in his window sill with arms wide, pretending to fly. Can he really fly? That’s the question that propels writer/director Nick Castle’s (The Last Starfighter) story forward. The resolution skews toward the fantastic, and while Castle indicates several times that’s the way he’s heading with the material, the film’s strength is more in its reality-based relationship between Milly and Jay. I like the build-up involving Milly’s patient progress with Jay, but there’s something about putting a fantasy ending on the challenges of autism that rubs me the wrong way. Still, The Boy Who Could Fly strikes an overall sincere tone, helped along with a great score by Bruce Broughton, and notable supporting performances from Colleen Dewhurst, Louise Fletcher, Fred Gwynne, Bonnie Bedelia, Fred Savage, and The Facts of Life‘s Mindy Cohn.