In 1998 Andy Phelps and some friends were riding in a car when they decided to speed up a hill so that the car would jump the crest and fly over the other side. When they did this they found a car parked on the other side and the resulting wreck left several of them dead and Andy in particular paralyzed without the use of hands or legs. As a former football player who was always making things and planned to ride his motorcycle and juggle his way across the country, this was a devastating impact to his young life.
I think early on here it is important to say that Andy Phelps deserves credit for pulling himself from the mire of guilt, self-pity and depression that surely awaited him whenever this accident essentially ended everything he had previously seen lying in front of him. His struggle is not unique to him but it is his own and he had to make it somehow – I'm not sure I could do the same in his position. I stress this upfront because I don't think that this documentary was particularly good. I liked the opening a great deal – a rockabilly music track introduces us to their young folly so that we go with it as a bit of fun, then it jars us into reality just as it did for those in the car and the community. From here the film follows events in Phelps' life but it does so in a way that really stayed on the surface of his struggle and kept it upbeat.
On one hand this is to be appreciated as the film could have gone uber-sentimental and milked it for every Oprah moment it could get, and it is better that it didn't. On the flip side though the film doesn't really get into the pain, doesn't really sink into the pit he must have been in and instead it is just easier words that we get. This makes the triumph of the spirit somehow less interesting and if I am honest I ended up wondering what about Phelps had made him have a documentary film where so many others haven't. Caleb Slain's directing and editing of old footage and photos is good but he didn't grab me emotionally and I have to say I am really surprised by that considering the subject matter. In the end it stays too much on the surface of events, doesn't draw the depths out of Phelps and as a result somehow limits how impressive his current situation is.
The story does still manage to engage but the film could have done so much more with this to justify why it was made and why the subject was chosen. All credit to Phelps himself, but a better film was deserved.
