The Good Boyfriend: Adam



Author Stephen King once wrote a short story about a person who had the power to know exactly what his potential love interest wanted -- a power which hypothetically should have made him the ideal boyfriend. However, it did not make him a good person. And eventually his would-be girlfriend caught on to that.

That said...

I was surprised to admit I liked the 2009 movie Adam. After seeing the rather cartoonish way Asperger's syndrome was depicted on Boston Legal -- the show initially showed its sufferer in a sympathetic light and then gradually began more and more to play his affliction for laughs -- I found this movie and its more realistic approach to be a bit of fresh air.

There was a scene in it where it threatened to turn into a bad Lifetime movie -- or worse yet, a bad remake of Happy-Go-Lucky. The ending was disappointing but at least it was more believable than a more audience-pleasing finale would have been.

I must confess that for the longest time I could not help seeing this movie as just one long variation on the old joke about how all women pick up on things instinctively and all men have to have stuff explained to them. After all, we've all seen bad sitcoms in which that same joke is repeated over and over again. And the movie was at its best when it stayed away from that territory.