Test Your Disability Knowledge! Watch “The Fundamentals of Caring”

I think Paul Rudd is adorable so when I was scrolling around on Netflix tonight for something to watch in my precious downtime, and saw he was in a disability related movie, I pressed, “play” pretty fast.

The Fundamentals of Caring

I’m in grad school again, and the other day one of my professors gave us all a few sample cases. We had to read through the given scenarios, come up with possible diagnosis, and ways that we might assess and move forward.

This movie felt like one of those scenarios, in the sense that it was a collection of ‘what’s wrong here?’

You could play disability bingo off this film.

From an able-bodied actor playing the role of a young man with Muscular Dystrophy, to denigrating care work, retard jokes, disability hierarchy, oppression olympics, “what’s wrong with you? Does your penis work,” and those moments of making decisions for the disabled guy like holding him up to stand, this movie has it all. And then some!

I really do mean it when I say you could play disability bingo off of this film. It would be kind of awesome for a bunch of people interested in disability studies (or disability!) watch this and test themselves in their knowledge of and understanding of what in this movie is actually SO OFF BASE.

Aside from that? 

Hanging out with Paul Rudd for 2 hours in this wasn’t worth it. I’d stick with Ant Man if I were you.

Here’s the trailer (and add another place on the bingo card for “captions not available”)