Movie Review: 'CODA' Starring Emilia Jones

CODA or Child of Deaf Adults was a huge festival hit in early 2021. The film debuted to huge ovations at the Sundance Film Festival and set a record when Apple TV bought the movie for a rumored $25 million dollars. With all of that buzz and hype you must be wondering, 'why have I never heard of CODA?' Great question, I wish I knew the answer. CODA is a really good family drama that Apple TV bought at a premium and spent nothing to promote.

CODA stars Emilia Jones as Ruby, the daughter of deaf parents Frank and Jackie Rossi (Troy Katsur and Academy Award Winner Marlee Matlin) and sister to Leo (Daniel Durant), who is also deaf. Ruby is 17 years old and the only life she’s ever known has consisted of working on her family fishing boat and acting as a bridge between her parents and the non-deaf world. Ruby’s father has become especially dependent on Ruby as the fishing business could not exist without the role she currently plays.

Naturally, being a 17 year old woman, on the brink of adulthood and independence, Ruby is feeling restless. In a rare, spur of the moment choice, Ruby sees a boy she likes, Miles (Ferdia Walsh Peelo), sign up for Choir as an extra-curricular and Ruby decides to join as well. Ruby has always enjoyed singing and her decision is perhaps in part an unconscious desire to explore a part of herself that is almost completely separate from her family and responsibilities.

Ruby’s Choir supervisor is Bernardo Villalobos, played by my nemesis, actor Eugenio Derbez. Full disclosure, I cannot stand Derbez’s brand of outlandish physical humor. I’ve never been able to find Derbez appealing on screen. CODA is the rare instance, for me, where his exaggerated form of acting isn’t completely irksome and distracting. Derbez hits the important beats and director Sian Heder does well to keep him from flying off into schtick.

CODA is a strange mixture of overly familiar drama and genuine emotion. Director Sian Heder has strong commercial appeal instincts but never at the expense of the genuine emotions she’s after her. She paints the struggle of Ruby incredibly well, the push and pull of responsibility and desire, loyalty and duty versus the desire to act on her own desires. CODA plays several familiar notes and is structurally by the numbers, especially the timed release ‘comic’ antics of Derbez who is deployed within the movie to lighten things up when the movie gets heavy.

Until the final scenes of CODA I wasn’t sure just how effective CODA is. My mind struggled and wrestled with the almost Lifetime movie qualities of the narrative structure and pace of CODA. However, when the final scene arrived it came with the force of a hurricane. All of the dramatic pieces of CODA fall neatly into place and give a firm structure to the final moments of the movie which are incredibly emotional.

The final moments of CODA don’t reinvent drama, they aren’t formally experimental, they are however, warm and genuine. The emotions at play swell to a magnificent wave and washes over the willing audience searching for the catharsis of shared emotional connection. It’s a sweet moment and I didn’t realize how well it was working on me until I felt my throat catch and my eyes began to well up at the recognition of a well earned emotional payoff.

CODA may be achingly conventional in many ways but filtering familiar elements through the unique lens of a deaf family goes a long way toward freshening up the familiar elements. CODA isn’t painfully restricted to formalism, more like awkwardly tethered to form and convention to appeal to mainstream audiences. That said, whether you are a snob like me or an average Joe, the final moments of CODA unfold with such delicate grace and beauty that it single handedly lifts the movie from just alright to something I highly recommend and would watch again.

CODA is available to stream now on Apple TV and is in limited theatrical release. Watch for the movie during the Academy Awards season as I imagine that Apple is going to put on a blitz that justifies the price they paid to acquire the movie at Sundance. That’s the only thing that can make this soft launch of the movie thus far make any sense.