CODA

Stop me when this sounds familiar: Ruby Rossi (Emilia Jones) is a shy but pretty girl with ambitions to sing, but remains held back by her parents expectations that she keep pitching in with the family business.  Now just append the detail that the parents (Marlee Malin and Troy Kotsur) are deaf and the expectation is that she keep working as their indentured interpreter and you’ve got yourself Oscarbait.

There’s no sinkhole, thank god… but I digress.

Writer/director Sian Heder (ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK) hits all the notes, a little too perfunctorily and predictably.   We know that the parents will embarrass their daughter in front of a boy she likes.  We know the town will mock them, only to be won over in a critical us vs. them moment—someone actually says the magical words, “It’s not the old days anymore.  Everyone has to make some sacrifices.”

We know her choir instructor is probably Latin, gay man who rolls his R’s like Americans imitating Latin, gay men because, hey, why have straight, white characters make fun of the gay comic relief when the gay comic relief can make fun of himself, letting the straight, white writer off the hook with a joke that should’ve died in 1998.  And we know that the lead’s going to have to choose between family and dreams, only to have that heartfelt talk with dad about his dreams just before the, “Hey, everybody, get in the car!  We can still make it in time!” twist.

It’s not ineffective.  And, to the casting director’s credit, deaf actors play the deaf father, mother, and brother (Daniel Durant).  But to this spastic diplegic critic, it feels like insurance to avoid tripping over the finish line because they’re there expressly for the purpose of having attention called to their deafness so that the “normal” daughter succeeds which always seems to mean half-assing it as a new amateur who, without any lessons, sings Joni Mitchell tunes with the voice of Tracy Chapman and suddenly has a shot at getting into the most prestigious music school in the country—a fact which even the audition judges say, out loud, is more than a little preposterous.  If that isn’t the most milquetoast of plots…

But at least now I know the American Sign Language for “twat waffle.”