Disclaimer: I’m a blind film critic. This film does have audio description available.

Somewhere in here, there’s a decent and inspiring true story of a boy who suffers burns on 100% of his body, and recovers, triumphing over adversity. An inspirational story for the ages. I’m not sure where that film went, or is, but supposedly it is playing a game of Where’s Waldo, where the good film is lost in a sea of ableism.

Why did you have to make it so weird? Like, why is this so weird? The film starts with our protagonist, as an adult, being randomly approached by a stranger, who heard tales of this man’s inspirational prowess, and would love for him to come and talk to her Girl Scouts about the power of being disabled? Overcoming adversity? I don’t know what Karen’s plan here is, but as a general rule, perhaps don’t approach disabled people you don’t know, and ask them to inspire your kids because you can’t. This guy’s backstory involves fire, and instead of using his story as a cautionary tale, he basically is there to be like “Hi, I’m Jake from State Farm. I’m disabled. Questions?”

And then, they keep making it weirder. One of the adorable Girl Scouts, instead of giving me cookies, asks him if he could take it back, would he? Umm. Let me think about that one. We’re not sure how to answer that, so we’ll put a pin on that, and show you a little flashback of the past.It’s not degrading to include the obvious conversation about making better life choices, but since the film isn’t really focused on fire safety, I’m not sure what prompted the question.I’m not sure why we needed to cut to a flashback, as the answer should be Yes. Unless he’s a terrible human, the accident that burned him ended up burning his house down. The house where his whole family lived. All of their stuff. No matter how proud you may have become adapting to your disability, the answer is a quick yes. if you ask a wheelchair bound user if they’d do it all again, and their cautionary tale backstory is a drunk driving accident that killed someone, the answer isn’t a hard pause while we cut to flashback. It is a comfortable Yes.

I don’t even know why we need to show him as an adult first. The film would be so much more impactful to hold his appearance until the end, and let the story play out on its own. I’d appreciate something a little less stupid than how he starts the fire, because my God, but we might be on a just the facts ma’am tour. The cast features some familiar faces like John Corbett (perpetually happy to be getting work) and Joel Courtney. I don’t have a problem with most of the acting,but some of the set ups are so contrived in the set up for the feature, it becomes hard to delineate where fact and fiction weave. its weird to see this as Sony’s Affirm, as that means they had a budget, presumably talented workers, and the support of a major brand.

If I could have stopped this, I would have forced a more natural version of the film, starting out with the kid, meeting the family, and then try to not make him seem like the worlds dumbest child. He starts a fire on a board inside his garage. Even if you don’t know how gas cans work, this kid should bare minimum not be burning wood in the garage. Then he pours gas directly out of the can onto the fire, which naturally causes an explosion. from there, it becomes a survival and recovery story. then, at the end we can see him and how he is doing just great, all things considered. He could even be someone teaching people about fire safety, so we can all have nice lessons to take from this. but the kind of infantilizing approach to getting him to bring his story to the Girl Scouts is so unnecessary. it isn’t even like his daughter is a Girl Scout.

Again, why did you have to go and make it so weird? Why is this movie so persistently ableist? there’s at least a good story here, and with a better script and director, perhaps even a great one. Sadly, it is just a moderately offensive waste of time. My dislike for this has nothing to do with the faith based angle, and much like Zachary Levi’s ill conceived The Unbreakable Boy, the death is in the execution.

Disabled people are nor inherently so inspirational that you should stop one on the street and invite them to speak to a pack of Girl Scouts. But Soul On Fire had to go and make it weird.

Rotten: 4.4/10