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 identify she offers to her suitably regal-looking golden retriever. There are not 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 approach by 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 ebook will enchantment to affected person, delicate children and their dad and mom, 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 extremely 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 typically really feel a bit pat.) Rudd’s involvement, in the meantime, could increase the profile of this Tribeca premiere sufficiently to web it some theatrical publicity, although it ought to really feel fairly at residence on the small display screen.
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 could 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 fully as much as the calls for of parenting — least of all when he drinks, which is commonly. Because of this, Rose has obtained fairly good at taking care of herself, although she’s susceptible to anxious episodes, significantly in school, the place some academics and college students perceive her higher than others.
Common checkins from Wes’ gentler, usually extra collectively brother Waylon (Rudd) are a stabilizing affect, although tensions endure between the 2 — unresolved from a troublesome childhood spent in quite a lot 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 probably 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 steadiness 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 fingers 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 together with her father, too, is uncommon in its unresolved jaggedness, whereas Sisto’s gruffly on-edge efficiency factors to a deeper properly of grownup ache in Wes that his daughter can not but handle or comprehend.
Considerably satirically, it’s Rudd’s heat movie-star presence that steers the movie closest to afterschool-special territory. Quite 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 an entire lot of interior life, however there’s a restrict to how a lot grown-up woe this tender-hearted little one’s-eye story wants. You’re left considering that if you happen to can’t get your lonely, weak little one a cuddly canine to observe over them, Paul Rudd could be the subsequent neatest thing.
