Review: ‘The Unbreakable Boy,’ starring Zachary Levi, Meghann Fahy, Jacob Laval, Drew Powell and Patricia Heaton

February 21, 2025

by Carla Hay

Pictured from left to right: Meghann Fahy, Gavin Warren, Patricia Heaton, Jacob Laval, Zachary Levi and Todd Terry in “The Unbreakable Boy” (Photo by Daniel McFadden/Lionsgate)

“The Unbreakable Boy”

Directed by Jon Gunn

Culture Representation: Taking place in Oklahoma, the dramatic film “The Unbreakable Boy” (based on the non-fiction book of the same name) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans and Asians) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A married couple with two sons have ups and downs in their family life because of their older son’s autism and rare bone condition; the couple’s financial problems; and the father’s alcoholism.

Culture Audience: “The Unbreakable Boy” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and faith-based movies that put schmaltz over realism.

Peter Facinelli, Zachary Levi and Drew Powell in “The Unbreakable Boy” (Photo by Daniel McFadden/Lionsgate)

“The Unbreakable Boy” puts a fairytale spin on a real-life family’s unsettling problems. There’s plenty of melodrama about medical conditions and financial struggles, but there’s an over-use of movie clichés that sugarcoat the truth. The truth is that the family’s problems that are depicted in this sappy movie don’t get resolved as easily in real life as the filmmakers want people to think they can be resolved, by presenting a perky boy with autism as if he’s some kind of good luck charm used for the family’s benefit.

Written and directed by Jon Gunn, “The Unbreakable Boy” is based on the 2014 non-fiction book “The Unbreakable Boy: A Father’s Fear, a Son’s Courage, and a Story of Unconditional Love,” written by Scott LeRette and Susy Flory. “The Unbreakable Boy” isn’t a typical faith-based movie that gets preachy about religion, although there are certainly some religious elements to the film. Instead, it’s a somewhat misleading movie that makes people think that it will be about mostly about the “unbreakable boy.” The movie actually takes a detour and becomes about how the boy’s self-admitted disappointing father goes on a downward spiral and has to find a way to prove that he’s a responsible parent and husband.

It’s a shame that the movie’s title is not reflective of the movie’s agenda and focus. “The Unbreakable Boy” movie also changes the age of the title character, just to make the most of having a cute underage kid to make the movie more appealing to families. In the book, the “unbreakable boy” is actually 18 years old. In the movie, he’s 13. It’s easy to see why the filmmakers wanted to reduce the age of “the unbreakable boy”: It’s more dramatic to have an underage kid be emotionally wiser and more honest than his screwed-up father. Making the kid a legal adult is much less compelling.

“The Unbreakable Boy” takes place in Oklahoma, where the movie was filmed on location. The movie’s title character is talkative 13-year-old Austin LeRette (played by Jacob Laval), who has autism and who was born with osteogenesis imperfecta, a rare condition that causes bones to break easily. Austin inherited osteogenesis imperfecta from his mother Teresa (played by Meghann Fahy), who has the same condition. Austin, whose nickname is Auz-Man (his imaginary superhero alter ego), is the chirpy narrator of the movie’s story. Austin likes to wear a jester hat, which becomes a symbol of his cheerful optimism.

Austin says in the narration that sometimes things get broken in life. He ominously says, “This is the night when everything broke.” “The Unbreakable Boy” begins with a scene where Austin’s father Scott LeRette (played by Zachary Levi) is drunk at a New Year’s Eve party at a country club. Scott has Austin and Austin’s 11-year-old brother Logan (played by Gavin Warren) at the party with him when he drives away from the party with the boys as passengers.

The car swerves and narrowly misses hitting another car. Scott is obviously too drunk to drive, but the movie never really shows anyone actually confront him about this reckless and irresponsible driving, nor is it shown if he got arrested for driving under the influence. This drunk-driving incident is never mentioned again and the only clue that it happened is when Scott is later shown in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

“The Unbreakable Boy” movie does that a lot in the movie: It has a dramatic, tension-filled buildup to a problem. But then, it abruptly segues to another part of the family’s life and leaves many questions unanswered, or it presents a trite, not-very-believable solution to the problem. You get the feeling that this family has a lot more dirty laundry that they just didn’t want to put in this movie. (Scott and Teresa LeRette are two of the executive producers of the movie.)

After this drunk-driving scene, the movie quickly goes into flashback mode, as Austin describes how his parents met and how the couple’s relationship progressed to becoming married parents. Thirteen years earlier, Scott was working as a medical supply salesperson when he went into a clothing store to buy a pair of trousers. Some green khaki trousers caught his eye but what really captured his interest was Teresa, a sales clerk at the store.

It’s mutual attraction at first sight. During this “meet cute” moment, Scott says he’ll buy up to eight pairs of the trousers if she’ll go out on a date with him. He also compliments Teresa on her bright blue eyes, which she says are bright because of a birth defect. Teresa gives him her phone number and says he doesn’t have to buy anything in the store but he can take her out for coffee. On their first date, a casually dressed Teresa is surprised that instead of going to a coffee shop, Scott has arranged for them to go to an upscale restaurant.

It’s the beginning of some communication problems that start early in the couple’s relatonship. Teresa has secrets that eventually get exposed. Scott and Teresa are casually dating for a few months when Teresa gets pregnant. Scott comes from a religious Christian family, so when he finds out that Teresa is pregnant, he proposes marriage. Teresa and Scott aren’t “in love” yet, but they’re getting there.

Teresa says no to the marriage proposal because she doesn’t think that she and Scott need to get married. She’s still emotionally scarred by her parents’ toxic marriage. Teresa says her father was an abusive alcoholic. Teresa also tells Scott that she has osteogenesis imperfecta, which is genetic, and she’s afraid this unborn child will have osteogenesis imperfecta too. Scott is more optimistic than Teresa is that their unborn child won’t have osteogenesis imperfecta.

Teresa’s main support in her family is her sister Lori (played by Amy Acker), a character who’s just in this movie as a sounding board to Teresa’s rants. Teresa’s parents are never shown in the movie, but Scott’s parents are. Scott’s father Dick LeVette (played by Todd Terry) takes the news in stride about the unplanned pregnancy. By contrast, Scott’s mother Marcia LeVette (played by Patricia Heaton) is furious because she knows that Scott now has to delay his plans to quit his job to go to grad school.

Marcia throws and breaks objects as she angrily shouts at Scott that he’s throwing his life away. That kind of violence isn’t very Christian, but the movie glosses over Marcia’s nasty temper as acceptable because she’s the type of “righteous” mother that these faith-based movies frequently excuse when these mothers are overly judgmental or hypocritical. Scott even jokes to his father that Marcia’s temper tantrum isn’t as bad as Scott thought it would be.

Scott and a pregnant Teresa move in together. And that’s when he finds out Teresa’s biggest secret when he discovers some of her legal papers: She’s been married and divorced twice before. Both marriages were short-lived, and her ex-husbands are no longer in her life. Scott gets upset but eventually forgives Teresa, who tells him that she’s sorry for not disclosing this information before their relationship got serious.

Scott proposes marriage again, and she says yes. Teresa wants to get married in a church. Scott wants to get married at a courthouse. Austin says in a voiceover that his parents reached a compromise. The next scene shows Scott and Teresa getting married in a church. It’s the movie’s way of saying that Teresa usually gets her way in the relationship. Teresa is never seen working outside the home again, so the movie implies that she became a homemaker after the birth of her children.

Austin is born, and the movie spends a great deal of time showing him as an infant, as a toddler (played by Roy Jackson Miller) and as a 5-to-6-year-old (played by Kellen Martelli), which is the period of time that Scott and Teresa find out that Austin has osteogenesis imperfecta and autism. There are several montages of Austin breaking his bones in various ways, usually from running around or jumping while he’s playing. Scott is shown as the only parent who’s with Austin when Austin gets his most serious injuries, which is another way of the movie putting an emphasis on Scott being the more “irresponsible” parent.

Logan is born two years after Austin. Logan, who does not have any health issues, is a compassionate and protective brother who gets sidelined a lot in this story because so much of the kid focus is on Austin, who does a few horrendous and abusive things while in a manic state of mind. Logan does not get enough credit for being such a wonderful child when Logan has so many reasons to be bitter and resentful about his parents having to pay so much attention to Austin.

Austin has the type of autism where he doesn’t know how to pick up on social cues, he will talk incessantly, and he will often take things literally. He will repeat doing things in almost an obsessive-compulsive way. He’s highly intelligent but socially awkward. And you know what that means: He gets bullied at school, but the bullying is psychological and emotional, not physical. The main bully to Austin is Tyler (played by Pilot Bunch), who actually gets physically aggressive with Logan, not Austin.

“The Unbreakable Boy” shows the ups and downs of the family and how Austin remains mostly positive through it all. Scott’s alcoholism gets worse after he loses his job. But he’s not the only irresponsible parent in the household. Teresa becomes unemployed too and appears to have become addicted to playing video games and shopping for things that the family didn’t need, thereby driving the family into debt. Teresa’s culpability is glossed over a lot in this movie, while Scott gets blamed the most as being the “terrible parent.”

But those are not all the questionable things about this schmaltzy film. Throughout the movie, Scott has an imaginary adult friend named Joe (played by Drew Powell), who’s supposed to be Scott’s conscience and “voice of reason.” Scott talks out loud to Joe, who sometimes dresses in identical clothing as Scott, and sometimes in different clothing. Joe mostly looks like a lumberjack who has nothing better to do than to hang out with Scott, who becomes a “sad sack” as his problems get worse.

The problem with “The Unbreakable Boy” is that it plays fast and loose with the truth and avoids answering some crucial questions. For starters, the movie unrealistically makes it look like Scott and Teresa had to take care of their two kids all by themself, even though there are indications that plenty of people could’ve helped. This potential support includes Lori, Scott’s parents and people at the church where Scott and Teresa attend. (Peter Facinelli has a supporting role as Preacher Rick, the church’s amiable leader.) The movie never shows if Scott and Teresa asked for any help in taking care of their kids. You don’t even see a babysitter in the movie.

Second, the couple’s debt is a big issue in the story, but the movie never explains if Teresa was willing to get a job to help pay off the debt, or if she and Scott agreed that she would be a homemaker, no matter what their financial situation. Sure, Teresa could’ve hidden all the debt she racked up, and Scott eventually found out. But the movie takes a very patriarchal view that it was Scott’s responsibility to fix this problem, even though Teresa was the one who caused the overspending problem. There’s also a scene where Teresa looks worried when she sees Austin’s medical bills that are a five-figure total, but then that medical debt is never mentioned again.

Third, that drunk driving scene is dropped into the beginning of the movie and then never properly addressed again. Instead, “The Unbreakable Boy” is more concerned about underage Austin preaching at the audience when he rambles on about his philosophies and observations about life. It all becomes a bit too phony, just like the movie’s force-fed concept that all anyone has to do is be in Austin’s presence, and life will turn out just fine.

Despite the movie’s obvious flaws, Laval gives a mostly delightful performance, although people with autism are probably the best judges of how autism is portrayed in the movie. (“The Unbreakable Boy” was originally scheduled to be released in 2022, but it was released in 2025, when Laval looks a lot different than he did when he filmed the movie.) Levi seems to enjoy portraying adults with emotional maturity issues, so this role as a flaky father is just more of the same for him. The rest of the cast members are serviceable, not outstanding, in their roles.

To its credit, “The Unbreakable Boy” has a positive message about how kindness can go a long way in changing someone’s life for the better. The movie also brings more awareness about osteogenesis imperfecta and autism, although families should teach any underage and impressionable children that this type of movie is not quite as realistic as it should be in portraying how public schools for children are legally allowed to resolve certain issues that are depicted in the movie. What’s really “breakable” in “The Unbreakable Boy” is how it reaches a breaking point of credibility in how these issues and more are mishandled in the movie.

Lionsgate released “The Unbreakable Boy” in U.S. cinemas on February 21, 2025.

Review: ‘Running the Bases,’ starring Brett Varvel, Gigi Orsillo, Todd Terry and Cameron Arnett

September 15, 2022

by Carla Hay

Brett Varvel in “Running the Bases” (Photo courtesy of UP2U Films)

“Running the Bases” (2022)

Directed by Marty Roberts and Jimmy Womble

Culture Representation: Taking place in Texas and briefly in Arkansas, in the early 2020s and the early 2000s, the faith-based dramatic film “Running the Bases” features a cast of predominantly white characters (with some African Americans and a few Latinos) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: After experiencing a tragedy that derailed his baseball dreams when he was a teenager, an Arkansas man in his late 30s becomes a coach of a high school baseball team in Texas, where he comes up against opposition to his religious ritual of running the bases. 

Culture Audience: “Running the Bases” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching faith-based movies or sports movies with a good story and a meaningful message about courage and standing up for one’s beliefs.

Todd Terry in “Running the Bases” (Photo courtesy of UP2U Films)

As a faith-based drama, “Running the Bases” has the expected religious preaching. Some of the movie’s supporting performances are subpar. However, this good-natured movie is saved by an appealing lead performance by Brett Varvel and some laugh-out-loud comedy. “Running the Bases” should be avoided by anyone who gets turned off by any religious dogma in a movie. But for anyone looking for family-friendly entertainment and can tolerate an unapolegetically Christian-leaning movie, “Running the Bases” is a viable option since it’s slightly better than the average low-budget, faith-based film.

Written and directed by Marty Roberts and Jimmy Womble, “Running the Bases” begins with baseball coach Luke Brooks (played by Varvel) on a baseball field during a pivotal moment in his life. Viewers later find out that Luke is a coach for a high school team called the Parkwood Lions. Luke says in a voiceover, “The path that led me to this moment is not what I had planned for my life.”

Luke mentions God’s purpose and what God the Creator had planned for him. Because the movie shows its religious tone within the first few minutes, viewers will know what to expect for the rest of the movie. The Bible gets mentioned quite a bit and becomes a catalyst for one of the major conflicts in the story.

“Running the Bases” then flashes back to 20 years earlier, when Luke was about 17 or 18 years old and in his last year of his school. The teenage Luke (played by Raphael Ruggero) and his fraternal twin brother Josh (played by Brendan Carl Reimer) are baseball fanatics whose dream is to play professional baseball. Luke and Josh, who are both on their school’s baseball team, live with their parents on a farm in Harrison, Arkansas. Josh is the “alpha male” of this brotherly duo, since he usually takes the lead in whatever he and Luke do.

Both brothers are fairly obedient and respectful. Their idea of rebelling is sneaking off to go fishing with their best friend Jessica (played by Dakota Bruton) instead of doing chores at the farm. The brothers’ mother, Diane Brooks (played by Anita Cordell), is very outspoken in her desire for Luke and Josh to stay in the family farming business.

Diane isn’t very happy that Luke and Josh have applied to a university that can offer full scholarships and where the twins hope to be recruited by a Major League Baseball team. “There’s more to life than baseball,” Diane says to Luke and Robert, much to the brothers’ dismay. Diane’s husband Matt Brooks (played by Stephen Caudill) is more neutral about this matter, but Matt wants the twins to help out with farming duties as much as they can, as long as they’re living there.

One day during a school baseball game, Josh collapses on the field and suddenly dies. The medical diagnosis was that he had an undetected heart defect. It’s also discovered that Luke was born with the same heart condition. He’s told by the attending physician Dr. Spurlock (played by Verda Davenport) that Luke cannot play baseball or do any activity that would put a lot of strain on his heart.

Needless to say, the Brooks family is devastated by losing Josh. There’s a very cringeworthy scene with some bad acting when a grief-stricken Luke is seen by himself wailing and shouting to God: “I’ve got nothing left. No brother, No baseball. Nothing!” he adds, “Can you hear me? Can you even see me?”

Shortly after Josh’s funeral, Luke gets a letter in the mail informing him that he’s been accepted to his top-choice college: Evangel University (where Josh also planned to attend) with a full scholarship. Luke tells his mother Diane that he has no desire to go.

But she has a change of heart about Luke going away to college. She tells him it’s what Josh would have wanted. Diane says tearfully to Luke, “He ran his race. He’d want you to finish yours.” Luke agrees to go to Evangel University. Sometime during Luke’s university years, Luke and Jessica get married.

“Running the Bases” then fast-forwards 20 years later. Luke is still in Harrison and working as a successful baseball coach for the same high school that he and Josh attended. Luke and Jessica (who is a homemaker) are happily married and the parents to a teenage son named Joshua (played by Bridger Trent) also known as Josh, who was named after Luke’s dead twin brother. Luke’s son Josh is about 16 or 17 years old and is in his junior year in high school.

Luke is such a great baseball coach, he has won nine state championships with the teams he’s coached. And so, it should come as no surprise that he gets a job offer from another high school. The person who recruits him is Michael Jamison (played by Todd Terry), the school district superintendent of Parkwood High School, which is in an unnamed city in Texas. Michael offers Luke a salary that is double of Luke’s current salary.

Luke wants to take the job, but Jessica (played by Gigi Orsillo) and Josh don’t want to move out of the only hometown they’ve ever known. In the end, Luke thinks the job offer is God’s way of saying that Luke needs to take on new challenges, so he takes the job. It’s also hinted that Luke still has painful memories of Josh dying on the baseball field where he has to coach his team, so he thinks moving to a new place might help ease those bad memories.

Relocating to Texas has some advantages and disadvantages. Luke and Jessica now live in a much bigger city and are delighted that they can now enjoy some conveniences, such as food delivered to their home, which is a service they didn’t have in rural Harrison. However, Luke is in for a shock when he finds out that the baseball team he’s coaching is so underfunded, they don’t have their own practice field, and they have to use a local park to practice.

Luke also gets mixed reactions as a newcomer to this school. Booster club president Ted Graham (played by Garry Nation) and assistant coach Cage Tyson (played by Stephen C. Lewis) are among those who welcome Luke without hesitation. Alex Kinney (played by Van Stewman Jr.) is an elderly man who’s been a longtime baseball coach for the school, so he’s not as friendly to Luke, because he knows that Luke is essentially replacing him.

Charlie Rogers (played by Robert Thomason), the school’s principal, is cautiously optimistic about Luke. Meanwhile, hard-driving superintendent Michael lets Luke know on several occasions that he expects Luke to turn the baseball team into state champions and do whatever it takes to win. This “win at all costs” attitude is not the same attitude that Luke has, so it should come as no surprise that Michael and Luke end up clashing with each other.

Meanwhile, Luke’s son Josh is on the baseball team but Luke tells everyone that no one on the team, including Josh, will get any unfair special treatment from Luke. Michael’s son Ryan (played by Justin Sterner), who’s kind of a know-it-all brat, is also on the team, and he tests Luke’s authority on the very first day that Luke becomes the team’s coach. However, Luke lets it be known immediately that Ryan won’t get any special privileges just because Ryan’s father is the school district superintendent.

Also on the team is an angry troublemaker named Cody Garrison (played by David Michael Reardon), who becomes an enemy of Josh for various reasons. One of them is because of a love triangle. Josh, who’s a new student at this school, has immediately gotten romantic attention from a schoolmate named Danielle (played by Amber Sweet Sterner), and Cody is jealous because Cody has wanted to date Danielle for quite some time, but she’s rejected Cody.

Ryan’s two best friends are also on the baseball team: easygoing Jerry Wilhite (played by Stephon Gryskiewicz) and energetic Cameron Scott (played by Will Oliver), who are essentially sidekick characters. In one of thee team’s first practices with Luke, the coach notices that school custodian Samuel “Sam” Parker (played by Cameron Arnett) is an enthusiastic watcher of these practices, so Coach Brooks immediately makes Sam an assistant coach for the team. Sam is so delighted and appreciative, he becomes a loyal ally to Luke when things get tough for Luke.

Luke is a coach who leads by using respect, not fear. He tells the team that winning is a goal, but it’s not the most important thing in the game. He says repeatedly that he thinks it’s much more important that they do their best, regardless of the outcome. He also firmly believes in this principle, which he imparts to the team: “Greatness isn’t defined by winning. It’s how you conduct yourself on and off the field.”

All of this might sound very corny, but the movie shows that Luke comes up against obstacles where he is tested and has to show if he practices what he preaches. Ever since his brother Josh died, Luke made it a ritual to run around the bases of a baseball field during practice and pray out loud while running. It’s Luke’s way of honoring God and paying respect to Josh.

However, superintnedent Mike is a staunch atheist, and he thinks that Luke’s religious ritual (which Luke does not force anyone else to do) has no right to be part of the team’s practices or games. And it just so happens that there’s a city ordinance that prohibits city-owned land for being used for religious purposes. Mike demands that Luke stop praying out loud during this “running the bases” ritual, but Luke refuses.

It leads to a feud between Luke and Mike. This feud escalates when Mike finds out that Ryan is showing interest in becoming a Christian, after Ryan spent some time with Jerry and Cameron for a barbecue and casual overnight visit in the Brooks home. And the next thing you know, Ryan is getting baptized. Mike gets even angrier when he discovers that Luke gave Mike a Bible as a gift.

Mike thinks religion is a “fantasy,” and he demands that Ryan have no part of it. One of the reasons why Mike is so against religion is because his wife/Ryan’s mother died of cancer when Ryan was 6 years old. A statement that Mike makes in the movie implies that Mike was probably religious in his past, but he turned against God and religion because of his wife’s death.

Even though Ryan’s home life is unhappy, he is the goofy comic relief in the story. The movie’s funniest moments have to do with a pink Love Rope that Luke uses to discipline and embarrass team members who are temporarily suspended for violating any of the team rules or disrupting the team. The rule-breaking team members have the Love Rope tied to each other and are forced to wear it for a specified period of time while watching the team practice from the sidelines. This Love Rope results in some amusing slapstick comedy in “Running the Bases.”

Even though the movie has some intentionally funny moments, “Running the Bases” is very much a drama. There are some very hokey moments in “Running the Bases,” but there’s nothing in this movie that’s entirely unrealistic. There are no “it’s a miracle” moments, but some viewers might roll their eyes in cynicism at how some conflicts are resolved.

A lot of credit should be given to Varvel in making Luke a believable person and delivering the sometimes very corny dialogue in a way that looks fairly natural. Luke is not perfect (he can be stubborn to a fault), but he can be relatable in some way to most viewers. Arsillo is also quite good in her role as the Jessica, but “Running the Bases” falls into the same stereotypes of a lot of faith-based movies that make female characters with the most significant roles as secondary to the male characters—usually as a love interest or family member of the male protagonist.

And although “Running the Bases” admirably has racial diversity in casting several African Americans in significant roles, there could have had more realistic Latin representation in a movie that’s supposed to mostly take place in Texas, a state that has a very large Latin population. And speaking of casting, unfortunately, some of the movie’s co-stars have awkward and stiff delivery of their lines. But because they are supporting characters, this substandard acting doesn’t ruin the movie.

“Running the Bases” doesn’t try to be anything else but what it is: an earnest and entertaining faith-based film. At least the movie is very up front about its religious elements and mostly succeeds with its intentions. “Running the Bases” also gives ample time to an atheist perspective by not condemning it but by showing the debate over religious freedoms and how they can or cannot be protected secular laws. Stick around for the movie’s end credits for an amusing scene that solves a big mystery that was presented in the story.

UP2U Films will release “Running the Bases” in U.S. cinemas on September 16, 2022.

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