Freak City (1999)

Ruth, a young woman in a wheelchair due to Multiple Sclerosis, loses her grandmother/caretaker and gets shoved into a nursing home by her aunt.

This is one weird home -- there's a guy with no other apparent problem other than blindness, some only slightly mentally impaired inhabitants, senile seniors, a woman who has lost the ability to apply correct words to things (played by Natalie Cole, so you know she'll be able to eventually sing at least), etc. I really didn't get it. Are there really places like this? Where group therapy sessions assume that a paralytic will have the same issues as a retarded woman?

Ruth basically shakes things up by encouraging the other residents, by example, not to resign themselves to wasting away inside the walls of "Freak City." Despite the presence of Peter Sarsgaard, I was not impressed. If you're in the mood for an honest look at people dealing with disabilities, watch The Waterdance.

D