The world is broken, and so are we.
Tectonic plates heave and push, birthing mountains in their wake. Foundations crack and buckle. Women and men bruise and bleed, fall and fail. We break so often that the word itself fills many a cliché. Bad break. Break a leg. Break my way.
To be human is to be broken. But some are more broken than others.
Austin knows plenty about bad breaks. He and the emergency room staff are on a first-name basis. Born with osteogenesis imperfecta, otherwise known as brittle-bone disease, the 13-year-old boy has had far more breaks than birthdays.
Oh, and he’s on the autism spectrum, too.
“Some kids who have autism can’t talk,” Austin tells us. “But I sure can!” And he’s not kidding. He’ll spend 15 minutes telling you why ice cream is just the best. He’ll quote practically an entire movie if the mood strikes. His zest for everything is unbridled. And while parents Scott and Teresa appreciate his enthusiasm, it can be a little—well, actually, a lot—exhausting.
Scott feels the pressure especially keenly. Every time he turns around, it seems, Austin takes a tumble that requires another rush to the emergency room. He struggles to connect to his always-full-bore son. “I feel like I’m failing every day,” he admits. “And the harder I try, the worse I do.”
He leans on his two buds to make the journey a little easier.
One is Joe, his easygoing sidekick who’s been with him since Scott was a kid. Sure, he’s an imaginary friend, but hey, at least it’s someone to talk with.
The other? Alcohol. A glass or two or seven really takes the edge off, y’know? He’ll drink a little with dinner. He might tell Teresa he’s working late while whittling away an hour or two at the local bar. And business trips? Those are the best. All his colleagues are pretty impressed with how he can drink steadily ‘til 2 a.m. and still make a dynamite business presentation at 8. Well, they’re impressed right up until Scott loses his job, that is.
We’re all broken. Austin has broken dozens of bones, each of which has knitted together quite nicely. But some breaks are harder to see, and harder to heal.
And sometimes the hardest part is knowing you’re broken at all.
[Warning: Spoilers are contained in the following sections.]
Austin has his issues, sure. But you’ve got to love the kid’s optimism. For Austin, according to his dad, “Every milkshake can be the best milkshake. Every day can be the best day.” He goes through life loving almost everything—and in turn, sometimes, it seems like almost everything loves him back.
That extends to school. Most of his classmates love him. And when it seems as though circumstances force him to switch to a more specialized environment, his friends beg the school to bring him back. Austin’s kindness even extends to the school bully: He belittles and teases Austin (though Austin doesn’t see it). And he torments Austin’s little brother, Logan, too. But when Logan lashes out at the bully and asks Austin why he likes the guy at all, Austin says, “Because he’s sad.” And turns out, that bully has plenty of reasons to be sad—reasons that only Austin knew.
If you read the introduction, you know that Scott’s far from a great husband or father. But he loves both his wife and kids deeply, and he’s one of Austin’s strongest, most tireless champions. For instance: When Austin gets a gig as a middle-school mascot and suffers a rare moment of listless despondency at a game—slumping over to the bench and taking off his tiger head—Scott takes the head and makes, honestly, a complete fool of himself on the court. The crowd loves it, but more importantly, Austin does, too. Soon, he’s dancing with his dad to the delight of the fans.
While Scott has his moments, Teresa holds the family together more than anyone. But she’s not going to put up with a lot of nonsense—especially if that nonsense threatens her kids. And when Scott makes a grave mistake, Teresa holds him accountable.
Scott is not particularly religious. And when Teresa starts going to church, he’s not thrilled about following suit. During his first visit, he confesses to a stranger that he feels like he was “dragged here against my will.”
“I sometimes feel the same,” the stranger says—who turns out to be Pastor Rick, the church’s leader.
Years later, during a family crisis, Pastor Rick tells Scott that he’d be happy to help if there’s anything he could do.
“I could use a favor,” Scott tells him. “Tell God that if He feels the need to punish someone, that someone should be me. Because I can handle it, and I probably deserve it. But I’d really appreciate it if He’d leave my wife and kids out of it. Thanks.”
Scott may be indifferent and even at times hostile to faith. But for Teresa, it’s an increasingly important part of her life. When she and Scott got married, she insisted on having the wedding in a church (whereas Scott wanted it in a courtroom). We see her pray. And she encourages Scott to take Austin to what appears to be a faith-based father-son camp.
At camp, Scott turns to Pastor Rick, who’s also attending. “I owe you one,” he says. “Or God, maybe. Maybe you can tell Him.” Pastor Rick says that Scott can tell Him himself; it’s not so hard. Soon thereafter, Scott has an epiphany as he talks to his imaginary best friend, Joe. “Are you … God?” Scott says. Joe is bathed in a heavenly light for a minute and he says, “Look in my face, son.” And then, he smiles and says, “No, I’m not God, you dimwit!”
Austin is conceived and born out of wedlock. It happened on Scott and Teresa’s third date (According to Austin): Scott asks Teresa late one night if they “can get out of here,” which serves as the prelude to their off-screen sexual encounter.
Scott and Teresa live together for months after Austin is born before they decide to get hitched. (Scott’s mother, Marcia, tells Scott that Austin is “a miracle, despite your bad choices.”) When Scott officially pops the question, he tells Teresa, “I think I might love you,” while she categorically denies that she’s in love with him. (Later, during the ceremony, she says, “I lied before. I think I might love you, too.”)
We naturally see Scott and Teresa kiss and flirt, both before and after they tie the knot.
On the first day of eighth grade, Austin dons a jester hat—his favorite of all his many, many hats. “The best part is, chicks dig it,” he tells his dad.
As mentioned, Austin breaks a lot of bones—dozens upon dozens of them, in fact. We rarely see how he breaks them: Scott and Teresa discover he has the condition (which Austin inherited from his mother) after he jumps off something and breaks his leg. Another time, Austin stands behind a swing—hoping to push his dad who’s using it—and gets knocked backward. (That’d be breaks 42, 43 and 44, Austin tells us through narration.) We learn that his first broken bones came during the delivery process. “The nurses started calling me a gold star member,” he tells us. “How cool is that?”
All those breaks create their own sort of tension in Scott and Teresa’s marriage. After the swing incident, Teresa’s furious—blaming Scott for the accident. “I just didn’t see him,” Scott says. “It could’ve happened on your watch, too—”
“But it didn’t, and it doesn’t!” Teresa says. “It’s always you!”
Someone gets into a car crash. A character throws something at the head of another person, drawing blood. Someone is choked. Two school kids get into a schoolyard fight.
Teresa loves violent video games, and she’s pretty good at them. “You can soothe the baby and kill mutant bugs at the same time,” Scott tells her as she plays. “Not bugs,” Teresa corrects. “Locust horde.”
We hear “a–” and “d–n” once each, and questionable uses of God’s name pop up a half-dozen times or so. We also hear some insulting language and put-downs. Someone uses the word “retarded.”
Both Teresa and Scott drink, but Scott’s own drinking habits grow progressively worse. At a hotel bar, an associate marvels at Scott’s ability to pair alcohol with work. “We got a meeting in six hours!” he says. “I don’t know how you do it.” The coworker walks away as Scott orders two more whiskeys—one for him, one for his “friend,” Joe.
It’s insinuated that Scott’s drinking got him fired, though Scott says that his employers simply didn’t want a “family man.” (He tells Teresa this, ironically, as he drinks a glass of wine.) His alcoholism progresses after he loses his job, and eventually, Teresa has had enough: She pours down the household alcohol down the drain and exacts a promise from Scott that he will stop drinking.
“I watched my mom put up with this for years, and I know how it ends,” Teresa says. “You stop this nonsense right now, Scott, or I am done.”
Scott promises to quit—but he continues to drink secretly.
This culminates in a scene we see during the movie’s outset—the night, Austin tells us, “when everything broke.” Scott takes his two kids to a New Year Eve’s party and gets plastered. He breaks things, dances with abandon and, in the bathroom, he gives himself (through Joe) a stern talking-to. “You are failing as a husband and a father,” he says—but Scott immediately rejects this reprimand, rounds up the kids and gets behind the wheel, weaving through the parking lot.
The next morning, Teresa throws cold water on him and throws him out of the house.
It’s the beginning of a painful reclamation process for Scott: He begins to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings., and The Unbreakable Boy focuses especially on the faith-centric aspect of the program. Scott lives with his parents for a long while before Teresa accepts his progress and takes him back.
Austin is prescribed the wrong medication, leading to some problematic consequences. He’s given a sedative at one point.
We hear (and occasionally see) diaper-related problems. Someone steals a skateboard. Characters lie. Austin’s parents apparently allow him to watch some pretty adult movies. About Fight Club, for instance, Austin says, “I flipping love that movie.” Scott and Teresa fall into some serious debt.
My biggest quibble with The Unbreakable Boy? The title.
Certainly, 13-year-old Austin might fit it, in a way. Despite his physical challenges and mental makeup, he is a boy who refuses to be broken. He embraces life with the enthusiasm of a puppy, with a love of God’s gift of life that inspires everyone around him. “I wish I could enjoy anything as much as my son enjoys everything,” Scott says.
The title could point to Scott, too. This husband and father can sometimes act like a little boy, unwilling for so long to give up his toys and selfish desires in order to become the husband and father he needs to be. But in the end—with his son serving as both guide and inspiration—he finds his way. He refuses to give up and does the hard work of fixing himself.
But to fix himself, Scott needs to acknowledge that he’s broken. And Austin, of course, breaks stuff inside himself all the time.
That’s the point, as Austin tells us at the outset. “True fact: Things break.”
He’s right: Things break. People break. We break bones. We break promises. We break hearts.
Unbreakable? None of us are. If only we were. If only we had, like Wolverine, bones of adamantium. If only we could, like Superman, turn away bullets with our hands. If only we could walk through this world without scars, without heartache, without sometimes crying out to heaven: Why, oh Lord? Why?
Granted, The Boy Who Didn’t Let Breaks Get Him Down doesn’t have quite the same inspirational ring to it as The Unbreakable Boy, which is probably why I review movies instead of writing them.
But still, the power of this film isn’t in unbreakable characters. It’s in the fact that they, like us, can be snapped like twigs over the leg of life. But they push forward anyway. They embrace that bully-of-a-life like a treasured friend. They learn to show not just courage in the face of terrible circumstances, but gratitude. They seal their fissures and fractures with gold.
“Your mistakes don’t define you,” someone says in The Unbreakable Boy. “How you heal does.”
The Unbreakable Boy sports a few cracks of its own, in terms of content. It’s got a bit of language, an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, a bit of violence and a lot of alcohol abuse. All these issues make it a bit edgy for a typical faith-based movie.
But some of those content elements are critical for the story The Unbreakable Boy is trying to tell, too. It drives home the very point of it all: Breaks happen. Mistakes happen. The key is how we overcome them. How we can even use them for good—to glorify God.
Some may accuse The Unbreakable Boy of being overly sentimental. But I’m a sentimental guy, and for me, this story absolutely worked. It’s funny and sweet and, most importantly, true.
We’re broken. We hurt more than we like. But man, life is still a gift. And what can we say to such a gift—even in the midst of our brokenness? Thank you.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
Our weekly newsletter will keep you in the loop on the biggest things happening in entertainment and technology. Sign up today, and we’ll send you a chapter from the new Plugged In book, Becoming a Screen-Savvy Family, that focuses on how to implement a “screentime reset” in your family!
