Film

A woman falls in love with her quirky neighbor, who turns out to be much, much quirkier than she thought. At first, Beth (Byrne) can’t figure out what to make of downstairs neighbor Adam (Dancy); she flirts and he seems utterly oblivious. He’s not very emotional about the recent death of his father. And he seems really fixated on space exploration. Then he gives a helpful little speech explaining his condition. Asperger’s syndrome, which is similar to high-functioning autism, has symptoms like social awkwardness, difficulty understanding normal social interaction and conversational cues, a lack of empathy and an obsessive interest in a single topic. Ah-hah.

Try as he might, Mayer can’t resist making Adam into yet another lovable weirdo whose difference teaches “normal” people something about (dramatic pause) themselves. Putting him in a space suit for a comical sequence doesn’t help. And a subplot involving Beth’s d-bag dad (Gallagher, playing “Jewish father” in embarrassingly broad strokes) seems intended solely to reassure us that we aren’t just gawking at a freak-of-the-week. Dancy and Byrne are appealing actors, but they can’t overcome the lumbering obviousness of the script, which is presented with a gooey frosting of scoring telling us exactly when to get dewy-eyed and when to chuckle gently. Even Adam could recognize these heavy-handed cues.