Please Stand By (2017)

Please Stand By review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso

Stories weaved of the mentally impaired are not easy and they carry a special level of ire from me when it comes to autism. Please Stand By is yet another story that goes through the similar motions of an awkward, stressed, and obsessed autistic, bound by habit and a quirkiness. It means well but ultimately retreats into the safety of a road trip adventure with small sparks of comedy amid its emotional aspects.

Dakota Fanning plays Wendy, an autistic in Oakland living with a caregiver played by Toni Collette. Wendy has a job she doesn’t like in fast-food but it keeps her straight. What she truly loves is Star Trek. She watches all the original episodes every day and has become obsessed with writing her own fanfiction. Not just any fanfiction, but the ultimate script of a Star Trek story that is keen of the lore and ripe with emotion. She then discovers there’s a contest for the best Star Trek fan script, being held by Paramount Pictures. After much perfection, she believes her epic is finished but doesn’t mail it in time. Long story short, she finds herself on her own with a road trip to Los Angeles.

While Fanning’s performance is genuine and she does bring subtle sweetness to her rattled character, she’s trapped in a story that doesn’t do much past make her the victim turned hero. She’ll need to run into several standard strangers along the way, including a deceptive couple, a swindling clerk, and a kindly old black woman who gives her some keen advice about family. The problem is the film never finds or settles on its proper groove as it loads up too many aspects and does so little with them. Wendy has a sister with a child but she’s terrified to come to meet the baby because the pains of her past have yet to heal. While Toni Collette searches for a missing Fanning, she struggles to figure out her Star Trek script and get a better idea of Wendy’s mental state. Patton Oswalt pops up as a cop and is it even the least bit surprised that I should write how he geeks out with Wendy on Star Trek? I could probably just mention his name and you could guess. Additionally, there’s Wendy airing her frustrations of how hard it is to write, delivering a sobering rant to the snooty Paramount contest accepter when she submits her script. Oh, and there’s also Fanning’s visions of her script playing out in cheap sci-fi fashion, true to the original Star Trek budget.

As someone with autism, I found the film to be a frustrating tightrope of drama, never quite finding its footing as it wavers between tearful drama and quirky comedy, relying on an ambiguous hipster score to hopefully fill in the blanks. I’m not going to mount some high horse about how Fanning is out of her element in this role as there are varying degrees that are impossible to nail with palpable hits. But portraying her character as a Star Trek-obsessed woman seems like there’s more potential there. In a few instances, we see others relate to her with Star Trek terminology but I find its peculiar how she would watch these episodes so many times and not adopt some of the personality from the characters or carry that over into talking with others. I personally found my habit of movies a better means of relating to people but that’s just one area. Wendy feels like a deeper tapestry deserving of more than a light adventure to resolve her sister issues.

Please Stand By wraps itself up in a light blanket of feel-good amid its tale of autism and Star Trek. Much like Wendy’s caregiver, who can’t tell a Tribble from Kirk, it’s a film that doesn’t seem fully relatable even for being a fable of sorts. I wanted to root Wendy to tell off the world but can only buy into the fantasy to such a degree that I would be more interested in Wendy’s script than the one for this film.