Netflix recently made a smart business decision by taking advantage of the buzz surrounding Me Before You by producing their own movie about a boy in a wheelchair. The Fundamentals of Caring, starring Paul Rudd and Selena Gomez, is almost the better version of Me Before You.
The first thing The Fundamentals of Caring does right is it doesn’t try to be a love story. The relationship between Ben (Rudd) and Trevor (Craig Roberts) is one of caregiver and patient. They do gain a pretty special bond, but it’s not romantic in any sense. There is a subplot of Ben losing his child, and how helping out Trevor has made him feel as though Trevor is his son. This minor subplot gets thrown away though when it causes an argument between the two characters. Their relationship can easily be defined as a friendship, with Trevor playing tricks on Ben throughout the movie, and then Ben getting him back in a pretty epic way.
Another way in which this movie proves to better than Me Before You is in the way they handle disability. Trevor does not let his disability define him or change his personality. This fact is proven when Ben shouts at him “You can’t be an a**hole just because you’re in a wheelchair!” To which Trevors replies “Maybe I’m just an a**hole, with or without the wheelchair.” Unlike Will Traynor of Me Before You, Trevor doesn’t let his disability excuse his behavior. This, of course, is due to the fact that Trevor, unlike Will, was born with his disability. This is refreshing, because like I said in my article about Me Before You, much of the attention given to disability comes when someone who was living their normal lives gets into some horrible accident. Caring destroys that stereotype, by having Trevor be born with Muscular Dystrophy. This makes the movie less of a pity party, and more of a coming of age story. Ben takes Trevor on a road trip not because he’s tragically dying and needs to see the world, but just because he needs to get out of the boring routine his life has become. It’s not some sad, “save Trevor trip” it’s just meant to be fun.
The movie does have some problems. The big one is the fact that Craig Roberts is able-bodied. Because Hollywood could never use a disabled person to play a disabled role. Can you imagine how ridiculous that would be? I’m not being too harsh on the movie, though because Roberts is a really good actor. It’s not his fault the moviemakers fell into the trap of Hollywood.
This movie was really great. If you subtracted the wheelchair, it could easily just be categorized as a coming of age story. But putting Trevor in a wheelchair turns into the disabled category. This is not something to necessarily be mad at, though because it is a great movie to add to the ever-growing category of movies about disability.
