Films with Autistic/Aspie Characters which don't mention AS

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Dr. Gregory House.

Blast From the Past. Brendan Fraser's character is a very smart, very nice person with AS traits. I liked the movie.

There was also a movie called the buckaneers, that had a very AS guy who paid more attention to his clock collection than his new wife. It was about American girls with money who married English aristocrats who had titles but little money left... like around Jane Austen's time and based on a novel of the period

The Accidental Tourist (also the book by Anne Tyler I think)

Dirty Harry, any character that ever appeared in any Star Trek movie or series, and those guys from Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, oh and also The Terminator.

I think it's futile to "diagnose" fictional characters for two reasons:

1. The character may be written as a human gestalt of particular aspie symptoms, but there's no meaningful access to the character's developmental history. The character is a composite created for the sole purpose of entertainment not to provide an enlightening case history.

2. Even if the character is written to be more or less autie/aspie, the actor him or herself may be an NT. An NT will probably not be able to play an autie/aspie with affectionate authenticity. The actor will unwillingly dilute/contaminate the character with aspects of his/her reflexive, natural neurotypicality. All the crucial subtle things that make up an autie/aspie's life-long frame of reference do not belong in an NT's life-long frame of reference and thefore the NT actor will often focus on performing the overwrought, caricaturistic symptoms and behaviors of an autie/aspie that has appeared in pop culture.

Of course, I understand this temptation to find some kind of meaningful representation in popular media, so even my aspie-radar picks up less-than-ambiguous aspie signals from fictional characters and real people, but most of the time it's an exercise in wishful thinking. I tell myself to focus on other stuff.

Tonight I watched the movie "El Cortez", in which the character played by Lou Diamond Phillips is supposed to be autistic. It is not mentioned in the movie specificly that I recall, but it was written in the blurb about the movie, and he does display alot of blatant stereotypical AS-ish mannerisms...and he has just been released from a mental ward, and the essense of his character is that he has mental problems.....But he is a charicature....he has Aspie traits...he has sociopathic traits...he is frequently called "crazy" and a "ret*d" by other characters in the movie.....I was goona start an entire separate thread about the movie to see if anyone had seen it...as it is a movie with an "Autistic" protagonist.
It is a pretty far fetched tale...and got pretty bad reviews from the critics, and mentally, I had mixed reviews about Lou Diamond Phillip's stiff portrayal of a charicature of more-or-less an Aspie with extreme sociopathic tendancies...

Lydia...Robin William's love interest in the Fisher King seems a likely suspect...I am drawn to any character played by Amanda Plummer in general...

LV in "Little Voice" if it has not been mentioned...also her love interest played by Ewan McGregor...kinda sorta.....but moreso LV.....seems like a very obvious ASish character...(emphasis on "ish")

My cousin and I rented Margot at the Wedding, last night, its not something I would ordinarily see especially given the logline but it was her choice. We didn’t end up liking it much but I think there were meant to be elements of aspergers in both Nicole Kidman and Jack Black’s characters.

It’s basically about a family whose dysfunction is mostly blamed on Nicole Kidman’s character, Margo, a sophisticated writer whose judgmental behavior and lack of empathy seems benign but actually has devastating effects on the emotions of those around her.

Margot has a problem with diagnosing everybody as autistic or aspergers – usually an indication someone has the issue in question themselves. She also projects her own dark side onto her fictional characters without knowing it, a similar thing. She is intelligent but very socially unaware in some cases, such as being unable to talk to her child as a child, instead of as an adult, and in a way that is very cold and inappropriate to his age level.

Kidman portrayed a character that has great sensitivity and emotion in her writing, or towards a little thing such as seeing litter on a nature trail, but often lacks it, and proper judgment, in her personal relationships. This seems consistent with some aspects of aspergers I’ve read. Unfortunately, she lacks basic kindness or awareness to simple things regarding her son, sister and husband.

I couldn’t help but wonder why Nicole Kidman, who gets paid millions a movie, would do some of the scenes in this movie. She is extremely talented but I question some of her movie choices. I know she did a film with Lars Von Trier whose “Breaking the Waves,” showed how people who are different can be victimized and abused, often tragically. Actually, from what I remember, I think was an awful piece of work that did not deserve all the discussion it had around it.

Margot at the Wedding, also seemed to point to the dark side of aspergers, but unlike the Trier film, she is not the victim, just the opposite, and its her family that ends up getting hurt. A complete reversal of everything I have seen in portrayals of autism so far in the media.

If they had said outright that it was a film about a character with aspergers I feel the film would have had more of a point to make, but it let it float in the dialogue at the start of the movie then dropped it.

Nicole Kidman is a great actress, providing a lot of little perplexing details to analyze and try to unravel, I wish I could interview her about it. Otherwise I’m not sure what at all to make of this movie.

My mum said the boy in 'About a Boy' always seemed like he had AS, and he was a bit awkward like me, or something. Apparently, he's less awkward in the movie, though, more so in the book.

About a Boy is one of my favorite movies. I thought the same thing about him. But also its about dealing with a single parent who is very unstable, being a child who is alone and has no stable adult or structure to his life, fractured family and building a new one all by himself from what life brings him. I think the boy is different maybe just because he has to deal with all this. He is actually very socialable in his own way.

I forgot to mention, I actually saw perhaps more AS in Hugh Grant's character even, than the boys. Certainly a lot of alienation and inwardness, his whole "island" living thing and segments of time