The Peanut Butter Falcon (2019)

IMDb plot summary: Zak runs away from his care home to make his dream of becoming a wrestler come true.
Directed by Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz. Starring Zack Gottsagen, Dakota Johnson, Shia LaBeouf, and Thomas Haden Church.

I love the story behind this movie. The young actor playing Zak in the movie met the writer/director and expressed his desire to be in a movie someday, and voila, this movie was written for him. I just wish that that actor had gotten a better project from it. It definitely centers his character and gives him some agency -- something a lot of movies about folks with disabilities do not do -- but the emotional and narrative arcs of this movie go *nowhere*, and the movie can’t figure out how to end, so it just abruptly jumps from a climactic moment (that complicates things rather than smooths them) to the happy ending. It’s so abrupt and so unexplained that I genuinely found myself wondering if it was a dream sequence. Additionally, this type of movie usually ends with the characters having learned or grown or… something. I’m not convinced any of them did? They all just did things. Especially Eleanor -- why is she even in this movie? It’s a strange, messy movie with a good heart.

How it entered my Flickchart:
The Peanut Butter Falcon < Lazer Team
The Peanut Butter Falcon > Rancho Notorious
The Peanut Butter Falcon < Closer to the Moon
The Peanut Butter Falcon < 101 Dalmatians (1961)
The Peanut Butter Falcon > Nine
The Peanut Butter Falcon > Arlington Road
The Peanut Butter Falcon > Pontoffel Pock, Where Are You?
The Peanut Butter Falcon > The Birth of a Nation
The Peanut Butter Falcon < The Aristocats
The Peanut Butter Falcon < 12 Days of Terror
The Peanut Butter Falcon > Petulia
Final spot: #2104 out of 3048.