In the era of an American president who openly mocks disabled people, Tyler Wilson and Michael Schwartz’s The Peanut Butter Falcon is a defiantly feel-good revelation, one that dares to celebrate the differently-abled amongst us in a story whose behind-the-scenes drama is just as heartwarming as what lays on the page. The saga involves an aspiring actor with Down Syndrome, two homeless wanna-be filmmakers living out of a tent and a Hail Mary DM to Josh Brolin. And that’s all before the movie even gets started.

The behind the scenes drama that led to The Peanut Butter Falcon is the kind of pumpkin-to-a-stagecoach transformation that the countless many heading to Hollywood only dream of. Wilson and Schwartz’s promise to build a story around lead actor Zack Gottsagen, who they met years before in an acting camp, snowballed after proof of concept footage made the rounds, serendipitously recruiting a rogue’s gallery of A-list performers who happily joined the film’s ranks. This led to strong buzz going into SXSW, where the film won the Audience Award and was met with overwhelming critical praise. Two aspiring storytellers and a protagonist with Down Syndrome had truly made the impossible possible.

As endearing a story as 2019 could summon, The Peanut Butter Falcon puts a special needs twist on a Mark Twain down-south river journey. Zak (Gottsagen, making you smile from ear to ear throughout) has Downs Syndrome and, without a family to care for him, is stuck in a government-mandated nursing home under the care of kindly Eleanor (Dakota Johnson). There, he wears down a wrestling videotape featuring his hero The Salt Water Redneck (Thomas Haden Church) alongside residents four times his age, plotting escape with roomie Carl (Bruce Dern). On the banks of swampy Georgia, Tyler (Shia LeBeouf) ganks crab pots, stirring trouble with rough-and-tumble locals Duncan (John Hawkes) and his tatted up band of miscreants. When Zak flies the coop, he and an on-the-run Tyler make an unlikely pair traveling down to Florida with dreams of finding their place in a society that has flat-out rejected them or cast them into the shadows.

A sense of endearing earnestness and fantastical realism bear-hugs the whole of The Peanut Butter Falcon and fans of Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild will find similarly soulful fantasy riddled with American pathos. Wilson and Schwartz don’t condescend to the material, their star, or their audience, creating a portrait of men seeking to carve out a place for themselves in a landscape that has roundly rejected their status as human beings. There’s a grit and anti-hero nature to this story and its characters, particularly in LeBeouf’s Tyler, a man of questionable ethical stature. But through LeBeouf’s gruff, no-nonsense worldview, we come to see Zak as the world should. His story is one of finding strength in defiance of other ignorant people’s perception of weakness; of being the hero precisely because you are different, not in spite of it.

The cast’s chemistry is magical with Gottsagen’s natural charisma binding him to his co-stars in a way that you just don’t often see. You can almost smell the fact that between takes, the cast would huddle up for a big group hug. The playfulness and often loosey-goosey improvised nature of the screenplay allows for scenes to unwind in a natural and unforced way with Gottsagen and LeBeouf smuggling tearful moments of reflection into otherwise comedic scene work. There’s a natural push and pull between the lighthearted “through a child’s eyes” perspective that Zak’s side of the story gives us and the forlorn sense of loss that haunts Tyler but as the two become planets stuck in orbit, a familial bond takes root that gives the characters a touching sense of finally belonging.

CONCLUSION: ‘The Peanut Butter Falcon’ is a lucky penny of a movie, a beacon of unfiltered goodness that never forgets that the number one rule of happiness in life is to party with the people you love. Shia LeBeouf and newcomer Zack Gottsagen are worth pouring one out for.