Life, Animated

2016 91 min ★ 7.4 Documentary

At three years old, a chatty, energetic little boy named Owen Suskind ceased to speak, disappearing into autism with apparently no way out. Almost four years passed and the only stimuli that engaged Owen were Disney films. Then one day, his father donned a puppet—Iago, the wisecracking parrot from Aladdin—and asked “what’s it like to be you?” And poof! Owen replied, with dialogue from the movie. Life, Animated tells the remarkable story of how Owen found in Disney animation a pathway to language and a framework for making sense of the world.

▶ Watch Trailer

Cast

Owen Suskind

Himself

Ron Suskind

Himself

Jonathan Freeman

Himself

Gilbert Gottfried

Himself

Details

Director

Roger Ross Williams

Tagline

"When he fell into silence, movies gave him back his voice"

Status

Released

Original Language

EN

Production

A&E IndieFilms, Motto Pictures, Roger Ross Williams Productions

Reviews

R

Reno

February 26, 2017

★ 8/10

**Where the sidekicks rules...** This is life and it is animated. We all grew up watching animations believed they are real. They are our first friends and also the first step to understand between the real and unreal. So what happens if you have never got as far as to know they are simply the fictional characters. This film is not about that, but there's a reason to I bring that up in here. ...