‘Being Heumann’ can’t do activist justice

    Anyone who has watched the amazing “Crip Camp” on Netflix knows the incandescent life force that is the fierce activist Judy Heumann. No one is more responsible for seeing through the passage of the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act than this unstoppable ball of fire. She’s loud, proud and, frankly, a big pain in the ass to anyone standing in her way of advocating for the largest minority group in America.  

     After witnessing the real thing in Nicole Newnham and Jim LeBrecht’s Oscar-nominated documentary, no filmmaker could do Heumann justice. Not even Sian Heder, the Cambridge-born writer-director of 2022’s surprise Best Picture winner “CODA.”  And the proof is right there on your Apple TV+ screen in “Being Heumann,” her underwhelming attempt to dramatize the most significant era in Heumann’s amazing life.  

      As with “CODA,” Heder smartly casts her follow-up with actors sporting actual disabilities. It adds realism, but little else, because, aside from Ruth Madeley as Judy, no one gets a chance to stand out. Yes, Heumann led the remarkable 28-day occupation of the San Francisco offices of the Department of Housing, Education and Welfare that the movie depicts. But she was hardly the only one waging the fight against HEW Secretary Joseph Califano (a blah Mark Ruffalo), who refused — due to budgetary reasons — to enforce Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act requiring all public buildings and byways be made “handicap accessible.”  

     It’s inspiring to see dozens of disabled people, most of whom had never spent more than one night away from home, camped out in the building, some going without food as part of a parallel hunger strike. But in recreating it, Heder and her co-scripter, Rebekah Taussig, rarely touch on these marginalized people’s backgrounds and motivations. We see their sacrifice, but the lack of context for how they all ended up here leaves you disappointingly detached.  

     “Crip Camp” gave us that background in spades, showing how childhood experiences at New York’s Camp Jened, a now-defunct summer retreat for children with disabilities, set the stage for what was to come a decade later. That lack of vital information robs Heder’s film of the urgency it needs to fully connect. Same for Madeley. She looks the part, but she falls short of capturing Heumann’s spirit and vivacious personality. “Crip Camp” revealed it splendidly, casting her as nicer, but no less annoyingly ambitious, Tracy Flick in a wheelchair. Seeing 15-year-old Heumann dish out orders at Camp Jened helped us relate to how she evolved into an impassioned adult community organizer. There’s none of that here.  

     Heder makes the fatal mistake of believing a movie can sustain on a steady diet of re-enactments. Still, it’s nice to see a disabled actress as talented as Madeley get a starring role. But what’s the point if you’re only going to saddle her with a shallow script? The same goes for her brave, disabled co-stars, as well as the cast’s two non-disabled stars, Ruffalo and Dylan O’Brien as Bay Area TV journalist Evan White. Both play real-life characters with tact and brains, but you’d never guess it, given how cartoonish they’re made to look.   

     The film also swings and misses at recapturing the heartfelt humor that won “CODA” its legions of fans. There are a few chuckles to be had, such as wheelchair races and a “sex tent” to help the protestors pass the time. But nothing LOL funny.  

    On the plus side, I thoroughly enjoyed Heder’s cheeky shoutout to fellow Bostonians, Aerosmith, by letting Heumann actually experience “love in an elevator.” Regrettably, that’s about the only time her film strives toward cleverness and originality. The rest is strictly Lifetime material, where convention and predictability are the norm. A remarkable human like Heumann deserves more. That is why I’m ending this review by sending you away from this and onto Netflix, home to the vastly superior “Crip Camp.” You can thank me later.  

Movie review 

Being Heumann 

Rated: R for language, some sexual material and drug use 

Cast: Ruth Madeley, Mark Ruffalo and Dylan O’Brien 

Director: Sian Heder 

Writers: Sian Heder and Rebekah Taussig 

Runtime: 127 minutes 

Where: In theaters now, premiering on Apple TV+ on Nov. 13 

Grade: C-