Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot

John Callahan was paralysed at 21 in a drunk-driving crash, got sober years later, and became one of America's most contested cartoonists, his line shaky and his jokes deliberately hard to defend. The film's backstory starts with Robin Williams, who optioned Callahan's memoir years earlier and brought Gus Van Sant in to adapt it. Williams died in 2014; the film arrived in 2018 with Van Sant directing and Joaquin Phoenix in the lead. Jonah Hill plays Donnie, Callahan's AA sponsor, and calls it the best work of his career, while saying plainly that he was frustrated with how Amazon released it. Rooney Mara and Jack Black round out the cast. It grossed 4.2 million dollars against a 3.5 million budget, which is close to invisible. Critics singled out its refusal to fall into inspirational biopic shapes. Who it is for: viewers who want addiction and recovery handled without emotional extraction. Who it is not for: anyone who will find Callahan's cartoons indefensible. The film does not sand them down.