Cinematic depictions of the handicapped tend to fall into two distinct categories: nice and naughty, the stereotype and the counter-stereotype. A handicapped-buddy tragicomedy, Rory O'Shea Was Here attempts both depictions, but the continuum between naughty and nice also characterizes the emotional arc of the movie, which begins like a sneering punk manifesto, but ends like a saccharine ballad.
Opening like a road-show One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Rory O'Shea stars James McAvoy as a quadriplegic hellraiser whose spiky hair, like Nicolas Cage's snakeskin jacket in Wild At Heart, is a symbol of his individuality and belief in personal freedom. Alas, McAvoy winds up in a home for Special People where those very qualities are frowned upon, if not banned outright. There, he strikes up an unlikely friendship with Steven Robertson, an earnest young man with cerebral palsy that renders him incomprehensible to seemingly everyone but McAvoy, who becomes his interpreter. Deciding they've had enough of British Nurse Ratcheds and the soul-crushing dreariness of institutional life, the two set out on their own with the help of a little blackmail and a sexy personal assistant, played by the luminous Romola Garai, who suggests a cross between Zooey Deschanel and Lucy Davis of The Office. At first, the pair are in what they irreverently call "cripple heaven," but before long, Robertson's doomed crush on Garai and McAvoy's simmering, rage begin to make freedom seem like a crushing burden.
As the film edges steadily into tearjerker territory, it becomes apparent that McAvoy will be a sacrificial lamb, one of those cursed souls doomed to teach a select few valuable life lessons about seizing the day, making the most out of life, and other assorted nonsense. Rory O'Shea is half sitcom, half sap. It begins with a fusillade of wisecracks and one-liners, and ends with big, inspirational speeches and grand symbolic gestures. It wants to humanize the plight of the disabled, but it undermines its worthy aims by presenting its leads as martyrs and saints.