It is pretty hard to dislike a documentary that is centered around a disabled group fighting for their own lives, and advocating to Congress, when you are a blind film critic consistently advocating for the needs related to your disability. Going into this, I wasn’t sure what I would get to see of Brian and Sandra, the central couple at the heart of the documentary. Brian was diagnosed in his 30’s with ALS, and as someone already working in the political spectrum, he started to piece together a campaign to fund a debilitating diagnoses that has no cure. It’s funny how many people remember the ice bucket challenge, but apparently a solid percentage of those people had no idea why they were doing it.

This explores the creation of I Am ALS, which focuses on giving a face and a voice to this disease, and educating those who have the ability to fund research for a cure a real world perspective on why some of the requests are so urgent. For example, due to the often rapid progression of the disease, in general ALS patients are willing to take drugs that have only passed the first stage of approval from the FDA, but legislation had to be passed so that this could be allowed. We also get to see Brian interact with Steve Gleason, who many remember as a former NFL player hit with an ALS documentary of his own.

it’s hard to find anything negative about this documentary when its heart is so firmly in the right place. I will say that the audio description from The Media Access Group was a head scratcher for me. Zambie Page does the narration, but it’s the written script that fails the film. Too often I was left wondering if the couple really was “walking down the sidewalk” together, or if there was a better way of communicating Brian’s accessibility requirements at that stage. For audio description, which is in and of itself an accessibility feature designed primarily for use by a disabled community, I would have thought that it would have realized that we can handle a serious look at Brian’s life. He seems to be struggling, but rarely is anything suggested in the audio description. Brian and Sandra allowed cameras to capture them so that they could change some minds about the urgency with how we attack ALS, and because of that it seems that the audio description should have taken more consideration in what disability representation looks like.

I know this isn’t a happy documentary that spreads cheer, but it is one you should probably check out. Definitely check it out if you dumped ice on your head for a viral video, without knowing why you were doing it.

Final Grade: A