I remember the Terry Schiavo case. At college at the time, it caused an interesting debate among my friends, who brought a lot of different perspectives to the table. Not one of them suggested “let’s pair the movie about her with a coming of age tale” for obvious reasons. And yet, it’s that weird pairing that makes Laura Chinn’s little gem work, made clear by the ending card how personal this is to her.
In the early 2000s teenage boy named Max is the Terry Schiavo here, rendered essentially brain dead by brain cancer. He’s technically alive, but he’s also not really living, motionless on a bed, cared for by his mom Kristine (Laura Linney) and sister Doris (Nico Parker). Kristine moves Max into hospice care for end of life watch, which the exhausted teenage Doris hopes comes sooner rather than later so she can start her own life. As fate would have it, Terry Schiavo ends up at the same facility, causing complications for the family, some negative…and some positive too; the friendless Doris finds Schiavo supporters like Paul (Woody Harrelson) to talk to, as well as a spotlight for girls at school like Laci (Daniella Taylor) and Brittany (Ella Anderson) to upgrade Doris from her wallflower status.
The joys of Suncoast are most felt watching Doris slowly come out of her shell. In high school movies, usually invisible means bad or unliked. Here, invisible means a blank slate to Laci and Brittany. Both sides see this relationship as transactional: Doris hopes for friends her age, Laci and Brittany need a parentless house to throw a party. But because Doris has built her whole life around her brother’s care and mom’s iron fist, she lacks the social skills to assert herself to this group. Not a problem: because she’s the new “thing”, Laci and Brittany have fun figuring Doris out as they’re throwing a killer party, seeing what’s up with their surprising host. Most movies would keep the girls’ relationship transactional until Kristine finds out, but Chinn’s script goes a different direction, as Doris’s open heart wins over more high schoolers as they get to know her. That confidence pushes the girl to stand up for herself, and speak up in class, letting people know what she thinks. Nico Parker really sells the unexpected but welcome transformation in Doris’s life, while still maintaining that winning teenage personality she has from the beginning of Suncoast, a tricky tightrope walk she pulls off and then some.
Funnily enough, it’s Max/Schiavo’s plights that emotionally don’t deliver as well as they should. When the conversations are in service of Doris’s social awakening, the scenes work, like when Doris stands up to Kristine for her, um, underwhelming parenting of her, or Paul’s student driving lesson that’s a delight to behold. But when the movie goes for big stuff, it goes too big, and leaves a sour taste in your mouth a bit. I like Linney, but she’s really dialing it up which doesn’t work, and Woody Harrelson has the same conversation with Doris over and over again (he’s the pro-life side of the Schiavo debate) that you could paste different scenes with him in different parts of the movie and it wouldn’t matter at all.
So props Nico Parker. Because of the script, you out acted a couple Oscar caliber actors and showed your chops. You also really made me sad, realizing that when your face went blank at Christian Milian’s Dip It Low or the Pussycat Dolls Don’t Cha, that’s probably what really happened because you were barely alive when they were hits. I hope you had fun with the tiny cell phones at least.