Weekend Movie Forecast: The Soloist Vs. Tyson

Based on a Los Angeles Times article that grew into full-length book, The Soloist stars Jamie Foxx as Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, a gifted classical musician afflicted with paranoid schizophrenia, and Robert Downey, Jr. as the reporter who tells his story while trying to help him. LA Times critic Kenneth Turan has panned the film, despite his fondness for his colleague: "I can't help being mightily frustrated by The Soloist. I can't help resenting that it suffered the death of a thousand cuts and, more frustrating still, that all this happened in the name of doing good in the world, of making the story's powerful lessons more palatable to a wider audience.

"But by consistently and relentlessly overplaying everything, by settling for standard easy emotions when singular and heartfelt was called for, by pushing forward when they should have pulled back, director Joe Wright and screenwriter Susannah Grant have made the story mean less, not more. Instead of enhancing The Soloist's appeal, they have come close to eliminating it."

Hollywood Elsewhere's Jeffrey Wells says, "Somebody wrote something about it being a kind of magic negro tale—a movie about how a black guy with amazing spiritual currents saves a white guy from becoming too wussy or distracted or divorced from life's essential bounty. Parts of The Soloist seem to work that end of the room, but...honestly? I just can't work up a head of steam about this film. And yet it's very decently crafted and smartly acted. A not-unsatisfying sit as far as it goes."