Rose, the 12-year-old protagonist of “Rain Reign,” is obsessive about homonyms — phrases that sound alike however differ in spelling and that means — and the title duly refers back to the title she offers to her suitably regal-looking golden retriever. There aren’t any hidden layers of that means, nevertheless, in Erika Burke Rossa’s simple, sweet-natured household movie. A easy story of a younger misfit making her method via a world she doesn’t perceive, it imparts pleasingly mature classes in resilience, selflessness and tolerance with out a lot in the best way of coding or disguise. Low-key and likable, this modest adaptation of Ann M. Martin’s 2014 kids’s e book will attraction to affected person, delicate children and their mother and father, however could also be a bit muted for others.
Although Paul Rudd takes first billing — and is on characteristically amiable kind as a kindly uncle — relative newcomer Felice Kakaletris is clearly the star of the movie, because the very smart, neurodivergent Rose. Solemn and earnestly empathetic, her efficiency persuasively anchors “Rain Reign” within the character’s naive however rigidly rational, strongly principled worldview. (Sufficient so, in actual fact, that the writing of her operating voiceover can generally really feel a bit pat.) Rudd’s involvement, in the meantime, might increase the profile of this Tribeca premiere sufficiently to internet it some theatrical publicity, although it ought to really feel fairly at dwelling on the small display.
For so long as Rose can recall, she’s been raised solo by her blue-collar dad Wes (Jeremy Sisto) of their rundown rural cottage in upstate New York; she might not have first-hand reminiscences of her mom, whom her father says left when she was an toddler, however she idealizes her simply the identical. Wes, in the meantime, is loving however not solely as much as the calls for of parenting — least of all when he drinks, which is usually. In consequence, Rose has bought fairly good at taking care of herself, although she’s vulnerable to anxious episodes, notably in school, the place some lecturers and college students perceive her higher than others.
Common checkins from Wes’ gentler, typically extra collectively brother Waylon (Rudd) are a stabilizing affect, although tensions endure between the 2 — unresolved from a tricky childhood spent in a wide range of foster properties, a backstory that Burke Rossa’s script parcels out in small doses, largely restricted to phrases understood by our younger heroine. Nonetheless, it’s the adoption of the aforementioned pooch, discovered one evening by Wes in a downpour, that proves essentially the most stabilizing affect on the instantly besotted and rigorously caring Rose: It’s not lengthy earlier than Rain turns into the definition of an emotional assist animal to her.
So when the canine is misplaced in a extreme storm that devastates the area and leaves many homeless, an overwhelmed Rose should stability the urgency of her search mission alongside the misfortune of others near her. That’s one of some pretty critical, character-building ethical and emotional challenges that the movie arms its lead: “Rain Reign” could also be be mild on main narrative incident by the requirements of a lot kids’s leisure, however you couldn’t accuse it of being small-stakes. Rose’s relationship along with her father, too, is uncommon in its unresolved jaggedness, whereas Sisto’s gruffly on-edge efficiency factors to a deeper effectively of grownup ache in Wes that his daughter can not but handle or comprehend.
Considerably sarcastically, it’s Rudd’s heat movie-star presence that steers the movie closest to afterschool-special territory. Slightly like Gretchen Mol in a small, sunny function as a nurturing animal-shelter supervisor, his Waylon throws a lifeline of grownup benevolence to a lady in any other case accustomed to adults letting her down; he doesn’t have a complete lot of interior life, however there’s a restrict to how a lot grown-up woe this tender-hearted baby’s-eye story wants. You’re left considering that in case you can’t get your lonely, susceptible baby a cuddly canine to observe over them, Paul Rudd is perhaps the subsequent smartest thing.
