Saturday morning in late spring and the predictions were that we were going to have a massive storm cell bringing severe storms over Brisbane on both Saturday and Sunday. Driving home from a morning appointment, the storm clouds were following me ominously and I just had time to pull in, collect the papers, bring in the washing and then BANG, big storm with lots of lightning, thunder and heavy rain. But it was over in a pretty short time, nothing too bad. So we jumped in the car to go into the city and see a couple of movies at Palace Barracks Cinema. The warnings all said there were more storms to come, but luckily the Barracks carpark is undercover so we could just relax and enjoy our movies. On the drive in, we realised that we had been lucky, as the inner-city looked like it had been completely smashed by a storm, trees down everywhere and huge amounts of water around.
Movie #6 was 'Mission to Lars' and I don't think I've seen a more heartwarming movie ever. It brought a little bit of sunshine to a dark and stormy day. Brother and sister Kate and Will Spicer have a 40 year old brother Tom who has Fragile X syndrome, a form of autism. He is a huge Metallica fan and continually tells his family and carers that he wants to 'meet Lars'. Lars Ulrich, Metallica's drummer, super businessman, artist, destroyer of Napster. Seems unlikely.
So Kate and Will decide to embark on a mission to bring Tom to America, see Metallica in concert, and if they are lucky, arrange a meeting with Lars Ulrich, all to be filmed for a documentary. And the fantastic part of this movie is that the most difficult part of this mission is not actually arranging the meeting with Lars - it's getting Tom to actually go to the meeting! You see, Tom's syndrome means that he needs routine and consistency, doesn't like to be around conflict and he hears noises more loudly than other people do so imagine him at a massive rock concert by Metallica! But just getting him on the plane looks difficult, as Kate wakes up late and it throws Tom out completely. It's fascinating to see how these siblings have so many problems adjusting their own behaviour to suit their brother, but eventually they do find a more relaxed pace where they can start to enjoy the family trip and make him feel comfortable. But get him to the concert? That is still an impossible dream!
It's hard to review this movie without giving away what happens, so I will say 'Spoiler Alert' so you can look away now.
Finally hitting on the right approach, Kate gets Tom to the venue and into the backstage area, where they wait and wait and it looks like the meeting is now not going to happen. We all feel really disappointed, as we have really grown attached to Tom as the movie progressed. But then, it happens, and Lars is so nice, and so cool and he goes well beyond just a 10 minute meeting. Yay! The look on Tom's face is amazing, when you think back on it you can just start tearing up. This is such a heartwarming movie and one that was very worthwhile seeing.
It also made us think a lot more about giving further support to charities like Young Care (http://www.youngcare.com.au/) which aim to get young people who need care into facilities that are more appropriate for their age, instead of nursing homes and aged care facilities. I'll certainly be supporting more than I have before. You should too!
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