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The Movie Room · a Living Undefeated resource
What is The Peanut Butter Falcon actually about?
Two people running from places they are not allowed to leave, down the coast of North Carolina on a raft. It is one of the few films we found that writes a disabled lead as a person rather than as a lesson for everybody else.
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One lead is grieving a brother who died, and the guilt is the engine of his half of the film. It is backstory rather than a scene you watch, but it surfaces repeatedly and the film does not resolve it tidily. If you are carrying a sibling loss, know that going in.
There is also drinking, a stolen boat, and two brief fights. It is rated PG-13 and it earns it.
What it is
A 2019 adventure comedy written and directed by Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz, running ninety-seven minutes. Zack Gottsagen, an actor with Down syndrome, plays Zak, a young man parked in a state nursing home because there is nowhere else for him. He escapes to find a wrestling school he has seen on an old videotape. Shia LaBeouf plays Tyler, a crab fisherman in his own trouble, who ends up travelling with him. Dakota Johnson plays the care worker sent to bring Zak back.
The film was written for Gottsagen, after the directors met him at a camp for actors with disabilities. That is the reason the part is shaped like a person.
Who this is wrong for, and when
Anyone grieving a brother or a sister. Anyone who finds the running-away-together shape of a film frustrating rather than freeing. And it is not a children's film — the language and the drinking put it out of reach for a mixed-age room, despite how gentle it looks in a trailer.
Why it is on this list
Because of what it refuses to do. Zak is not there to teach Tyler a lesson about gratitude, and the film never once asks the audience to be moved by his existence. He wants a specific thing, he pursues it badly, and the other characters argue with him about it the way people argue with anybody.
That matters on this site. Families in our position get handed a lot of stories in which somebody's difficulty exists to improve a healthy person, and most of them are unbearable from the inside. This one is on the list precisely because it declines that trade.
If this one is not right for you
CODA — the same instinct about difference, inside a family.
The Intouchables — caregiving written as friendship.
Hidden Figures — if you want something with no grief in it at all.
Where to watch it
Start with your library. Kanopy and hoopla both carry independent titles of this kind, free with a library card. It otherwise rents cheaply and rotates through subscription services.
We make nothing from any of these links. There are no affiliate links anywhere on this site and there never will be.
Back to the room
The Movie Room — one hundred films, sorted by what the evening needs.
How to tell if a charity deserves your money
We publish the test we use on ourselves, including the parts we do not pass yet. Read it here.
If tonight is bad
988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline — call or text 988, any time, anywhere in the United States.
Crisis Text Line — text HOME to 741741.
These are never behind a form on this site and never will be.
Before you give to anyone
How to tell if a charity deserves your money
We wrote down the checklist we use. Before we send a dollar anywhere, we run the organization through CharityWatch, the BBB Wise Giving Alliance, Charity Navigator and Candid. It is one page, and it works on any charity — including this one.
Read the checklist — freeOn the site, right now. Nothing to fill in and no email needed.
Start here — free, no sign-up
Guide one · 7 pages
A Reason to Get Up
Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning, and what that book can and cannot do for you after somebody dies. Who Frankl actually was, what he actually argued, and the famous quote that is not his.
Download the guide — freePDF, 7 pages. Nothing to fill in, no email, no ask attached to it.
Three more, if you want them
These are the books we read and the things we did after we lost Austin. Not advice and not therapy — an honest account of what helped us, and what the research actually says about each of it. Every statistic in them carries a source and a year.
Guide two · 9 pages
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The Power of Now, and what is actually happening when you cannot stop going over it. Includes the part no grief guide prints: meditation is not risk-free, and who should be careful.
Guide three · 11 pages
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Why doing something for somebody else, expecting nothing back, appears to do something for you. With a verified list of places that will take you this week, and the ones that will ask you to wait a year.
Guide four · 16 pages
The First Year
The practical one. What actually has to be done, what the months afterward really look like, and fifty things that might help — each one labeled for whether there is evidence behind it.
If tonight is bad
988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. Call or text 988, or chat at 988lifeline.org. Free, confidential, 24 hours a day, anywhere in the US. You do not have to be in immediate danger to use it.
Crisis Text Line. Text HOME to 741741.
Veterans Crisis Line. Dial 988 then press 1, or text 838255.
If there is an immediate danger to life, call 911.
