Louder Than Words

It’s a feel-good film with an infectious sense of fun and inspiration that brings out the best in people instead of catering to their lowest instincts.

Unfortunately director Anthony Fabian prefers to dole out emotion in short bursts of superficial montage rather than fully dramatic scene work in which characters deepen through extended interaction. That leaves Louder Than Words feeling diffuse, choppy and cold rather than illuminative about how broken families heal after terrible loss.

Duchovny tamps down his sardonic style to play a quiet guy, but the result is blandness. Timothy Hutton gives a solid turn as a standup businessman. In all, director Anthony Fabian isn’t sure how to build a nontreacly movie out of an inspiring true-life story.

There’s a way to tell this story that wouldn’t come across as soggy or manipulative. However well intentioned, Louder Than Words doesn’t find that tone.

At every turn, the movie is less moving than the real-life events that inspired it.

Never once does it project an intuitive understanding of how humans would behave or react in the midst of such a shattering misfortune.

This is advertisement masquerading as a story, pretending to be a movie, but at the very least, it’s for a good cause.