Customer Ratings & Reviews

Music Within is a biopic revolving around Richard Pimentel, a wounded Vietnam vet whose efforts at finding jobs for fellow wounded vets along with his friendship with Art Honeyman, a writer with severe cerebral palsy, led to Richard's widespread workplace disability training and the eventual creation and adoption of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. However, despite solid performances by Ron Livingston as Richard, Melissa George as his love interest Christine, and Michael Sheen as Art, the film falls into predictable pitfalls. First, as a Vietnam-era biopic, with the vintage soundtrack and generic battlefield sequences, Music Within feels like it could have been pulled from Forrest Gump, Born on the Fourth of July or any number of films revolving around Vietnam vets' painful readjustments to civilian life. Livingston is simply too old to pull off a convincing teenage Richard, and the scenes of Richard's early childhood are awkward and strike a sour note. The role of Christine, Richard's love interest, was one-dimensional and instantly forgettable (she appears when the script requires it, other than that she's off practicing "free love" with her other boyfriends). As a "disabled" film, there are moments that reminded me strongly of Rory O'Shea Was Here, an Irish indie film starring James McAvoy and Steven Robertson as wheelchair-bound rebels, one with muscular dystrophy and the other with severe cerebral palsy. Art's CP also brought to mind Daniel Day-Lewis's performance in My Left Foot (Special Edition), which also leads me to my next observation: despite comments from directors, surely there must be professional actors with actual cerebral palsy. Despite well-meaning portrayals, having able-bodied actors attempt to recreate the symptoms of CP, even if done well, always feels like a cheap shot to me, and at times Michael Sheen's performance borders on caricature. Also, despite a split-second scene of Richard's speech therapy class, the onscreen portrayal of lipreading is highly inaccurate. The sloppy script lacks any real drama, and I agree with a reviewer who stated that the film would have been much more powerful if Art had been the narrator instead of Richard. The '70s is merely set dressing, and there is no sense of any real passage of time other than hairstyles. Despite the blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameos from Rebecca De Mornay, Hector Elizondo, and Leslie Nielsen, the film came off feeling unpopulated, focusing on Richard's quest with little real depth or insight, despite the backstory of his seeking acceptance from his mentally ill mother. There are numerous continuity goofs in respect to period details, but the sound editing, distorted at times to reflect Richard's tinnitus, is effective. Overall, Music Within still had its moments, particularly from the razor-sharp wit of Art's painfully delivered lines (which, per other films with CP characters, are mostly unintelligible). Much like the device used in Rory O'Shea, Richard serves as Art's mouthpiece when dealing with other people since he is the only (!) person who can understand him. There is a lot of heavy profanity, drinking, and drug use by the Vietnam vets and several scenes involving death, so if you're sensitive to any of these, consider yourself forewarned. The DVD also features deleted scenes (nothing special), a commentary, several trailers for other films, and a keynote speech from the real Richard Pimentel.