No One Cares About Crazy People is the kind of documentary that announces the urgency and problem right in the title. No questioning about what the film is about, clearly the guide is to show us that no one cares about crazy people, and thats something we should… care about. Based on the book by Ron Powers, who is included in the documentary, and wrote about his experience dealing with two sons dealing with various mental health issues, the film broadens its reach in scope by finding more individual stories to amplify the scale of the epidemic.

As an example, a prime focus of the film is a sister who has spent a long time trying to find the right help for her brother, having spent decades exhausting every resource available to her. She goes to great lengths to explain all the ways they’ve tried, and how the system continues to fail, often just arresting him because they don’t know what else do do with him. And, his trauma isn’t even your typical bipolar or other easily diagnosable ailment, but stems from a traumatic brain injury that left him disabled, mentally and otherwise.

The thread of pointing out that police are often unequipped for handling mental health issues is pinpointed through parents of a young man who met with officers unable to comprehend that they were not in danger, and shot first, asked questions later, leaving the parents devastated, but with a nice judgement in their favor that funds a charity named after their son designed to stop other failures from occurring.

The title is a lie, because clearly people do care, which is why the film exists, but the title is pulled from an asinine comment made during the Presidential campaign of Scott Walker. Other politicians are shown here, notably Gavin Newsome, and hopefully this can remain a non-partisan issue so it can help the people it needs to help.

If I could change one thing, it would be bob Odenkirk. A weird choice, I know. I love him too, but he feels like a cash grab, and not connected to the project. Last year, Bradley Cooper did a sound job of making sure people knew why he was backing Caretaking, but Bob lacks the personal story to connect him. With all the celebrities out there, someone has to be personally affected, and also at Bob’s level.

This felt like a solid choice for Reel Abilities, but also like a documentary that could play any film festival. I was more than surprised to hear ecaptcha did the audio description, as I often complain about their low quality AD, specifically on TV shows. Here, there’s not much more they could have done. The narrator was a solid choice, matching the tone, and the writing was more than competent, even more so by their standards. I give credit when it is due, and this was shockingly a strong audio description track given the typical expectation for this type of film. Documentaries often elicit a fractional selection of audio description anyway,with talking head documentaries being the worst offenders, but I found the description here more than adequate. Thanks, Decaptcha.

No One Cares About Crazy People is a weake up call from people who care about crazy people, likely preaching to the choir, in an attempt to get the choir to sing louder about a largely still ignored epidemic in this country that affects more than we’d like to admit. Hitting close to home is kind of the point.

Fresh: 8.8/10