movie review coda

At first glance, you might think that writer/director Sian Heder ’s “CODA” is all about predictable beats you’ve seen countless times before. After all, it tells a pleasantly familiar coming-of-age tale, following a talented small-town girl from modest means with dreams to study music in the big city. There’s an idealistic teacher, a winsome crush, moving rehearsal montages, a high-stakes audition, and naturally, a family reluctant about their offspring’s ambitions. Again—and only at first glance—you might think you already know everything about this feel-good recipe.

Caring, boisterous, and adorned with the hugest of hearts, “CODA” will prove you wrong. It’s not that Heder doesn’t embrace the aforesaid conventions for all their comforting worth—she does. But by twisting the formula and placing this recognizable story inside a new, perhaps even groundbreaking setting with such loving, acutely observed specificity, she pulls off nothing short of a heartwarming miracle with her film, the title of which is an acronym: Child of Deaf Adult. Played by the exceptional Emilia Jones (who is blessed with Grade-A pipes), the gifted young girl in question here happens to be one, navigating the intricacies of her identity, passions, and familial expectations, trying to reconcile them without hurting anyone’s feelings, her own included.

Admittedly, “CODA” is adapted from the French film “La Famille Bélier,” so the idea of it isn’t entirely novel. What’s new here—and it makes all the difference in the world—is the cast. While the family in the well-meaning original were played by hearing cast members (with the exception of the brother brought to life by deaf actor Luca Gelberg), they are all portrayed by real-life deaf performers in Heder’s movie—a sensational group consisting of legendary Oscar winner Marlee Matlin , scene-stealing Troy Kotsur and Daniel Durant —infusing her adaptation with a rare, inherent kind of authenticity.

Jones is the 17-year-old Ruby, a hardworking high-schooler in the coastal Cape Ann’s Gloucester who habitually wakes up at the crack of dawn every day to help her family—her father Frank (Kotsur) and brother Leo (Durant) and mother Jackie (Matlin)—at their boat and newly found fish sales business. Heder is quick to give us a realistic taste of Ruby’s routine. Accustomed to being her family’s sign-language-proficient interpreter out in the world as the only hearing member of the Rossi clan, she spends her days translating every scenario imaginable two ways: at town meetings, at the doctor’s office (one early instance of which plays for full-sized laughs thanks to Kotsur’s golden comedic chops) and at the boat where a hearing person must be present to notice the signals and coastal announcements.

What Ruby has feels so balanced and awe-inspiring that it takes a minute to recognize just how exhausting the whole arrangement is for the young girl, even though she makes it look easy with maturity and a sense of responsibility beyond her years. For starters, she is all too aware of everything private about her parents, often including their medical conditions and (to her riotous terror), sex life. When the hearing world becomes cruel or belittling, she steps in, almost with protective instincts, always prioritizing them over herself. But when Ruby joins the school choir and discovers her talent for singing, it throws off her balance and puts her at odds with her family, especially when she decides to apply to Boston’s Berklee College of Music, adopting a rehearsal schedule that often clashes with her duties in the family business. Complicating the matters further is a fellow singer and romantic interest named Miles ( Ferdia Walsh-Peelo from “ Sing Street ”), a shy kid with a genuine admiration for Ruby.

If there’s one misstep here, it’s how far Heder leans into the inspiring teacher trope with Eugenio Derbez ’s Bernardo Villalobos, a character that somehow transmits a sitcom-y artificiality in an otherwise earnest movie. Derbez does what he can with a collection of cookie-cutter dialogue lines, but his scenes don’t always land with the same honesty we see elsewhere in “CODA.” Still, this lapse in judgment feels minor in a movie so affecting, so in touch with its old-fashioned crowd-pleaser character. (Had it actually played in a physical version of the Sundance 2021 instead of its virtual edition, this would have been the standing ovation story of the festival.) And plenty of other types of sincerity throughout “CODA” make up for it, from the way Heder portrays Cape Ann and the life around it through lived-in details, to how she honors the joys and anxieties of a working class family with candor and humor, without ever making them or their Deafness the butt of the joke.

Most of all, she makes us see and believe in our bones that the Rossis are a real family with real chemistry, with real bonds and trials of their own, both unique and universal just like any other family. What Ruby’s chosen path unearths is the distinctiveness of those everyday battles. Would her sound-driven talent put a distance between Ruby and the rest of the Rossis? What would the world look like for the quartet if Ruby chose to leave? Through a number of deeply generous (and to this critic, tear-jerking) scenes—but especially a pair that play like each other’s mirror images—Heder spells out the answers openhandedly. During one, all sound vanishes while Ruby sings in front of her nearest and dearest, making us perceive her act from the point of view of the non-hearing. During the other, featuring a well-chosen track that might just melt even the frostiest of hearts, sound doesn’t matter at all. Because Heder ensures that we see the boundless love that’s there, in their shared language.

On Apple TV+ today.

Tomris Laffly

Tomris Laffly is a freelance film writer and critic based in New York. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle (NYFCC), she regularly contributes to  RogerEbert.com , Variety and Time Out New York, with bylines in Filmmaker Magazine, Film Journal International, Vulture, The Playlist and The Wrap, among other outlets.

• Emilia Jones as Ruby Rossi
• Eugenio Derbez as Bernardo Villalobos
• Troy Kotsur as Frank Rossi
• Ferdia Walsh-Peelo as Miles
• Daniel Durant as Leo Rossi
• Marlee Matlin as Jackie Rossi
• Amy Forsyth as Gertie
• Geraud Brisson
• Marius De Vries

Cinematographer

• Paula Huidobro

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‘CODA’ Review: A Voice of Her Own

An openhearted embrace of deaf culture elevates this otherwise conventional tale of a talented teenager caught between ambition and loyalty.

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By Jeannette Catsoulis

The template of “CODA” — the title is also a term used to describe the hearing children of deaf adults — might be wearyingly familiar, but this warmhearted drama from Sian Heder opens up space for concerns that feel fresh.

Ruby (Emilia Jones, delightful), a shy 17-year-old in Gloucester, Mass., is the lone hearing member of her rambunctious family. Between interpreting for her parents (Marlee Matlin and Troy Kotsur), and helping run the family’s fishing boat with her father and older brother (Daniel Durant) each morning before school, Ruby is exhausted. Since childhood, she has been her family’s bridge to the hearing world; now, her newly awakened desire to sing is perhaps the one thing they will struggle most to understand.

Weighed down by a groaningly predictable plot — which includes a cute-boy crush, a colorful music teacher (Eugenio Derbez) and a climactic singing audition — “CODA” relishes the opportunity to showcase the expressiveness of sign language. (The film is extensively subtitled.) The actors work together seamlessly, the blue-collar coastal setting is richly realized and the family’s cohesiveness solidly established. And if some interactions move to the clichéd beats of a sitcom, Ruby’s efforts to share her musical talent (notably in one lovely scene with her father) are remarkably affecting.

More than once, Heder effectively flips the film’s viewpoint to that of her deaf characters (who are all played by deaf actors). At a school concert, the camera watches Ruby’s family in the audience as the soundtrack abruptly cuts out, allowing us to glimpse the sometimes blanketing isolation of a silent world. In moments like this, when the quippy dialogue subsides and the story relaxes, we see the ghost of a more fruitful movie, one that would rather surprise its viewers than feed them a formula they have come to expect.

CODA Rated PG-13 for unrestrained flatulence and a bawdy mime. In English and American Sign Language with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 52 minutes. Watch on Apple + .

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‘CODA’ Review: Sian Heder’s Family Drama Kicks Off Sundance on a Note of Enthralling Emotion

The story of a high schooler who's the only hearing person in her family, it's an authentic crowd-pleasing gem.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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“CODA,” which features three remarkable deaf actors, is most assuredly a crowd-pleaser, though in this case I want to be specific about what that means. In many ways, it’s a highly conventional film, with tailored story arcs that crest and resolve just so, and emotional peaks and valleys that touch big fat rounded chords of inspiration.

Yet the movie, written and directed by Siân Heder (it’s a remake of the 2014 French film “La Famille Bélier”), brings this all off with such sincerity and precision, and the film is so enthrallingly well-acted, that you may come away feeling grateful that this kind of mainstream dramatic craftsmanship still exists, and that it thrives at a place like Sundance. I wouldn’t want every independent film to hit you over the heart as squarely as “CODA” does, yet I wouldn’t want to live in a world where we don’t have movies like this one. In its straightforward way, the film delivers an emotional knockout. It’s a movie about a family, and by the end you may feel you know them as well as you know your own.

They speak in ASL, a form of communication the film treats with supreme neutrality, even as it gives the audience a de facto crash course in it. Frank, in particular, is a highly colorful and effusive signer, given to eloquently obscene kiss-offs that he spits out with a kind of percussive gesticulation. The signage, like any language, has its own music, and Heder, as a filmmaker, captures its expressive power as fully as I’ve ever seen it captured in a movie.

Troy Kotsur, from “The Mandalorian,” is an extraordinary actor, and here, with squiggly hair, burning eyes, and haggard features set off by a thick gray fisherman’s beard, he looks like Roberts Blossom with a touch of an ancient Frank Zappa. Frank, a pothead and ebullient curmudgeon, is a man of force and fury and, at times, too short a fuse. In his pickup truck, he pumps gangsta rap at top volume so that he can feel the rhythm through the seats, and he says things like “You know why God made farts smell? So deaf people could enjoy them too.” His fishing business is struggling, mostly because the middlemen on the Gloucester docks are squeezing the fisherman dry. But back at the large, messy, ramshackle house that Frank shares with his wife, Jackie ( Marlee Matlin ), a former beauty queen who’s as gnarly and argumentative as he is, and their two kids, the Rossis are a feisty, happy, settled clan. They support each other and know how to have fun, even if that means passing around Leo’s Tinder prospects at the dinner table.

At school, Ruby is a serenely well-adjusted if somewhat shy senior, with a best friend, Gertie (Amy Forsyth), who acts out the raunchy impulses Ruby is too cautious to consider. Ruby signs up for choir as an elective, and it’s mostly to be near Miles (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo), a shaggy cute dude who’s got the same quiet gracious vibe she does; the singing is secondary. But Ruby, in fact, has quite a voice, and when the choir teacher walks in, with his dandy beard and dour smirk and flamboyant accent, and introduces himself with R-rolling theatricality as Ber- narrrrdo Villalobos, we know just what we’re looking at: a teacher who’s going to be a stern taskmaster, a prize eccentric, and a straight-out-of-the-movies inspiration. Eugenio Derbez portrays him with a grandiose persnickety fervor but, beneath that, a note of unspoken sadness, and it’s an irresistible performance because it becomes a lifesize one.

And then there’s Ruby’s mom. Marlee Matlin plays her with a bracing blend of affection and cantankerousness, making her a bit of a pill, the kind of loving but overly cautious mother who doesn’t realize she’s using her fear to squash the dreams of others. Jackie and Frank have a robust sex life, but they fight like cats and dogs about finances. And Jackie’s relationship with Ruby is even trickier. Ruby, under Mr. V’s influence, wants to apply for a spot at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, and Jackie, who already resents her daughter’s attraction to singing (“If I was blind, would you want to paint?”), is now terrified of losing her baby. These two have it out in a scene where Ruby dares to ask her mother if she wishes Ruby had been born deaf. The answer stings, but it’s naked in its honesty, and it kicks off the most wrenchingly emotional movie scene I’ve seen in quite a while.

Siân Heder, who came up as a writer and story editor on “Orange Is the New Black,” has directed just one previous feature (“Tallulah”), but she’s got the gift — the holy essence of how to shape and craft a drama that spins and burbles and flows. There are daring touches in “CODA,” like the way the school concert plays out (rarely have you heard silence this golden). And there are scenes that will stir you to the core, like the one where Frank listens to Ruby sing by holding up his hands to her vocal cords. As Ruby, Emilia Jones acts with a captivatingly authentic purity of feeling. Her Ruby is a girl of vibrant impulses, poised between Motown and the Shaggs — and more than that, between acting as her parents’ communicator to the outside world and communicating to them what’s really on her mind. All of them are great talkers. But the story the movie tells is about what it takes for them to hear each other.

Reviewed in Sundance Film Festival (online), New York, Jan. 27, 2021. Running time: 111 MIN.

• Production: A Vendôme Pictures production, in association with Pathé. Producers: Philippe Rousselet, Fabrice Gianfermi, Patrick Wachsberger, Jérôme Seydoux. Executive producers: Ardavan Safaee, Sarah Borch-Jacobsen.
• Crew: Director, writer: Siân Heder. Camera: Paula Huidobro. Editor: Geraud Brisson. Music: Marius de Vries.
• With: Emilia Jones, Troy Kotsur, Marlee Matlin, Eugenio Derbez, Daniel Durant, Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, Amy Forsyth, Kevin Chapman.

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Review: 'Coda' is an emotional powerhouse and one of the year's best movies

Here’s the movie that restores the good name of the crowd-pleaser.

Here's the movie that restores the good name of the crowd-pleaser. You'll laugh, you'll cry and all steps in between at the funny, touching and vital "CODA," now in theaters and on Apple TV+. CODA stands for Children of Deaf Adults. It also represents the very best in family entertainment.

Having broken records with its $25 million sale at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, the Oscar-buzzy "CODA" also describes Ruby Rossi (breakout star Emilia Jones), a hearing Massachusetts high school student who lives with her mom (Marlee Matlin), dad (Troy Kotsur) and hotheaded brother (Daniel Durant), all deaf and all played by deaf actors.

Jones, a British acting and singing discovery, merges effortlessly into the role of an American teen growing up in a Gloucester fishing village. Ruby must, by necessity, act as an intermediary for her working-class family in the hearing world. The livelihood of her parents depends on it.

But what about Ruby's ambition to sing? When her choir teacher Bernardo Villalobos (a sweetly over-the-top Eugenio Derbez) urges her to try for a scholarship at Boston's competitive Berklee College of Music and pairs her with heartthrob duet partner Miles (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo from "Sing Street"), romance and career start intruding on her role as family point person.

MORE: 'The Green Knight' review: Dev Patel deserves Oscar attention

The movie has great fun with mom and dad's rowdy sex life, especially when they use it to embarrass shy Ruby when she dares to bring home a boy. But Jones is tender and tough when she needs to be to show why the bond holds despite tension between Ruby and her family.

Still, the acting triumphs of "CODA" belong to the trio of deaf actors at its core. Hollywood has traditionally cast non-deaf performers in such roles. In the 2014 French film, "La Famille Bélier," on which "CODA" is based, both parents were played by hearing actors. Not this time.

Matlin, who won an Oscar at 21 for 1986's "Children of a Lesser God" (she's still the only deaf actor to do so) had the clout to insist on representational casting. She's a sparking livewire as Jackie, the loyal mom with an edge who calls other town wives "hearing bitches" and resents Ruby's music ("If I was blind, would you want to paint?").

MORE: Review: 'In the Heights' pure unleashed joy grabs you and never lets go

Ruby's brother Leo (an explosive Durant) is even more disgruntled when Ruby steps in to negotiate the best price at the fish market since Leo feels, rightly, that outsiders need to learn how to cope with his deaf family without cheating them in the process.

As Frank, Ruby's raucous dad, Kotsur is hilarious and heartbreaking. In one scene, he asks Ruby to sing just for him, placing his hands on her throat to feel the vibrations of her vocal cords in his fingers as she sings the Marvin Gaye/Tammi Terrell classic, "You're All I Need to Get By."

If that moment doesn't bring you to tears, an earlier one will have you reaching for a tissue as the sound drops out at a concert in Ruby's school and we understand what the Rossi clan experiences when the audience applauds a musical performance they can't hear or share.

Download the all new "Popcorn With Peter Travers " podcasts on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , Tunein , Google Play Music and Stitcher .

All praise to hearing writer-director Sian Heder, who learned American Sign Language to communicate with actors who give their soulful all. Not just with hand gestures, body language and facial expressions, but with the rare ability to connect heart to heart. However you say it or sign it, "CODA" is an emotional powerhouse and one of the year's best movies.

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The movie ‘CODA’ reminds us that cliches sometimes work — and brilliantly

“You’ll laugh, you’ll cry” has become something of a cliche in the world of theater and movies, the kind of pull quote from a rave review that guarantees a full gamut of audience pleasure.

“CODA” is here to remind us that, as often as not, cliches are true — and sometimes happen to work. This formulaic coming-of-age comedy-drama, adapted from the 2014 French film “La Famille Belier,” pushes our buttons shamelessly, but also with enough sincerity, warmth and finesse to forestall accusations of rank manipulation. This is an old-fashioned movie that adheres to admittedly familiar principles of storytelling and emotional stakes, but by way of such a winning cast, evocative atmosphere and genuine tone that its impossible not to love. For audiences weary of superheroic bombast and worn out from puzzling through art house arcana, “CODA” is here to save the day. It’s sweet, funny, meaningful and accessible in precisely the right measure.

We meet Ruby (newcomer Emilia Jones) when she’s working on the family fishing boat with her dad Frank (Troy Kotsur) and brother Leo (Daniel Durant), singing her heart out to no one in particular. Frank and Leo are deaf, as is Ruby’s mother Jackie (Marlee Matlin). Ruby is a CODA — child of deaf adults — and as such, she is her household’s chief interpreter and go-between with the outside hearing world.

It’s a role in which she has excelled, but now that she’s a high school senior, with dreams of a singing career, she’s beginning to chafe under her family’s stifling combination of dependence and wildly unconditional love. The title of “CODA,” then, carries two meanings: More than being about deafness, this is a movie about bringing things to a graceful but necessary end.

Written and directed by Sian Heder, “CODA” possesses the sunny optimism of so many classics of the genre, a bracing look and feel that’s amplified by its setting in Gloucester, Mass. Jones brings an appealing mix of diffidence and forthrightness to Ruby, who must suffer Frank and Jackie’s unbridled approach to everything — especially their sex life, which becomes a running gag. Matlin and Kotsur have a blast leaning into their uninhibited characters, who are so used to being understood by their daughter that it rarely occurs to them to try to understand her.

In “CODA,” deafness is a part of life but not its all-defining feature: Heder has made a movie about the universal values of first love, family ties and the tug of an unknown future, within a highly specific but immediately comprehensible context. And she does not stint on the laughs: In addition to Frank and Jackie’s anarchic humor, “CODA” benefits from the presence of Ruby’s glee club coach Mr. Villalobos, a martinet with a heart of gold played with deadpan élan by Eugenio Derbez.

Did I say glee club? Yes I did, which means that in case “CODA” wasn’t adorable enough, it’s elevated by a bevy of fun musical numbers, the most winsome of which is a duet that Ruby rehearses with a dreamy schoolmate named Miles, played by Ferdia Walsh-Peelo. (Jones’s performance is all the more commendable considering that she’s British, had to learn American Sign Language for this role, and is possessed of a lovely, unaffected singing voice.)

Will Ruby and Miles ever kiss? Will Ruby nail the big audition to get into Berklee College of Music? Will Frank’s fishing business survive without the negotiating acumen of his daughter?

The audience knows that the answers to those questions are mostly preordained. But that doesn’t detract from “CODA’s” myriad joys, which have less to do with novelty than with the film’s simple, straightforward taste and a grounded sense of honesty. Nowhere is that more obvious than in the film’s climactic scene, an adroitly staged performance in which the feelings come fast and furious, each more contradictory than the last. You’ll laugh, all right. You’ll cry. You’ll do both at the same time. “CODA” is just that kind of movie. And thank goodness for it.

PG-13. At area theaters; also available on Apple TV Plus. Contains strong sexual elements and language, and drug use. 112 minutes.

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The playful, fearless CODA asks tough questions about Deaf family life

Orange is the New Black’s Siân Heder lays out a family drama with humor and heart

by Matt Patches

[ Ed. note: This review was first published in conjunction with CODA ’s release at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival . It has been updated for the film’s theatrical release.]

Logline: As her senior year comes to an end, Ruby (Emilia Jones), the only hearing person in her Deaf family, is torn between studying music at college and remaining at home to help — and maybe save — the family fishing business.

Longerline: As a CODA, a Child of Deaf Adults, Ruby juggles multiple roles at the young age of 18. She’s a daughter, a student, a musician, a fisherman, and a translator. In the mornings, she lends her father, Frank (Troy Kotsur), and brother, Leo (Daniel Durant), an ear and an extra pair of hands as they trawl for fish off the coast of Gloucester, Massachusetts. She’s an animated, no-bullshit character while gabbing around the dinner table with her mom, Jackie (Marlee Matlin), or negotiating a fish sale, but at school, she can’t find her voice. After catching the eye of the firebrand music teacher (Eugenio Derbez) during a show-choir audition, Ruby suddenly sees a path for her future: vocal training, the Berklee College of Music, and a life beyond her family. It’s reasonably terrifying.

In this microcosmic moment, everything Ruby knows begins to change. A crackdown on fishing boats puts her father and brother’s deafness under systematic scrutiny and threatens the local fishing industry at large. Her musical pursuits raise the question of what her family will do without her; everyone is perfectly functional in navigating society without vocal speech, but juuuust dependent enough on Ruby as a business liaison that no one can imagine her leaving home. The growing intensity of her Berklee audition rehearsals and a blossoming relationship with her fellow choirmate, Miles (Ferdia Walsh-Peele), pressurize the already intensely intimate scenario.

What’s CODA trying to do? Writer-director Siân Heder ( Orange Is the New Black ) previously made the 2016 Netflix premiere Tallulah , which followed a homeless teenager who inadvertently kidnaps a baby that she believes needs rescuing from an irresponsible mother. In CODA , she again slices off a piece of life and pops it in a pressure cooker. Replacing the ticking clock with a warmer tone, the family drama aims to both portray the challenges of growing up culturally Deaf, and look beyond disabilities to recognize that life’s hardships, whether in a world full of sound or not, are universal.

The quote that says it all: “I can’t always be that person.”

Does it get there? Authentic, sensitive, and playful, CODA remains human even as it tugs at the heartstrings. Heder leaves no anthropological distance between her camera and the subjects, ensuring that the movie never “others” the Deaf characters, while still making sense of how much we rely on hearing for simple tasks. On the same note, there’s a fearlessness to prolonged dialogue scenes playing out in ASL. As they talk through their issues, Frank, Jackie, Leo, and Ruby swing from low to high emotions, and the physicality of the performances are absorbing. The UK-born Jones apparently learned to sign, sing, and put on an American accent for the role, and you’d never know it — she holds the movie together in an astonishing breakout performance.

Circumstance puts extra, often funny-in-retrospect hurdles in front of Ruby and her family. When her dad comes down with a jock itch, his teenage daughter melts in a puddle of awkward as she gestures to convey an inflamed genital rash to the doctor, then translates a prescriptive recommendation of abstinence to her mother. On the docks, Ruby and Leo butt heads over the price of their latest fish haul — she knows from what she can hear that he’s getting scammed, but her older sibling is way too proud to let her play hero.

And during a flirtatious rehearsal for their upcoming duet, Ruby and Miles wind up overhearing Jackie and Frank’s… lively… bedroom activity. These are the trials and tribulations of teen life, plus a twist of fate. (And if there’s one bit that doesn’t quite work, it’s Derbez’s over-the-top music teacher, whose sitcomy tone doesn’t quite match the lived-in feeling of the family comedy.)

Heder finds her way into tension and tougher questions. The family’s fear of the unknown is compounded by the possibilities on the horizon: Ruby has a fabulous voice, a skill her parents will never be able to comprehend as a viable future for their daughter. The anxiety arrives just as Frank’s own career path is thrown out of whack; he’s been fishing all of his life, but the extortion of fisherman by dock bigwigs turns his life into a mini Elia Kazan drama. It isn’t as grim as On the Waterfront , but Frank, Leo, Jackie, and eventually Ruby all wind up in a fight to take hold of their business and livelihoods.

There’s a lot on the line, and Heder strings it all together in a mainstream package that recalls everything from Ordinary People to Save the Last Dance and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before . And while the drama is immediate and timely like those films, it also feels like it has a past and present. This is to say: Yes, I would watch five seasons of the Parenthood version of CODA .

What does that get us? The movie camera is uniquely equipped to get in close and capture a sign-language spat, and the results in the hands of veterans like Kotsur and Matlin are spellbinding. Writers rarely gift two Deaf actors with the chance to go at it. Heder gives them painful moments behind closed doors, tender scenes with Ruby, and bits where they’re just goofy parents. Durant, best known for playing a Deaf character in a reimagined revival of Spring Awakening , is also fully alive and dimensional as Leo, a tough-but-sweet young man who’s looking for his own career path.

CODA offers a simple explanation for the importance of representation on screen: a century of movies born from homogenous perspectives has left so many stories untold, and so many experiences uncharted. There’s a simple thrill in seeing familiar dramas play out in the hands of actors who’ve often been relegated to side roles. Matlin is a hysterical, vibrant movie star-type who always plays “the Deaf character,” but here, she’s the mother, the wife, and the entrepreneur. She has so much to give the screen, and Heder taps it all.

The film may be a little sweet for some tastes (yes, I cried) but CODA is also refined. In a dark moment, I was thankful for the film’s celebration of family, friends, and life.

The most meme-able moment: Get ready for an extended sequence where Ruby’s new guy-pal Miles learns the ASL translation of “masturbating into a condom.”

When can we see it? CODA launches for streaming on Apple TV Plus on August 13.

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CODA review: Tender coming-of-age Sundance drama earns its praise (and price)

This review initially ran out of the Sundance Film Festival in February 2021. CODA will be released Aug. 13 in theaters and on Apple TV+.

The Sundance Film Festival is still often a place for small unpolished gems. But CODA , which premiered there on Thursday night, is the kind of movie that seems to arrive fully formed — and has already been rewarded accordingly with by far the highest purchase price in Sundance history, $25 million by Apple TV+ . (Andy Samberg's existential rom-com Palm Springs set the record last year , with $17.5 million.)

Those staggering numbers seem at odds at first with the film's modest outlines — a classic coming-of-age tale, populated mostly by lesser-known actors and set in a small Massachusetts town. The charm in writer-director Sian Heder's breakout second feature is easy to find though, and much of it stems from the sweet specificity of her premise; British actress Emilia Jones (Netflix's Locke & Key ) stars as Ruby Rossi, the only hearing person in a deaf family.

The Rossis are a rowdy crew: Patriarch Frank (Troy Kotsur) and his grown son Leo (Daniel Durant), both tattooed brawlers, descend from a long line of local fishermen; they drink and smoke and make fart jokes, and when Frank's not on the boat, he's usually finding a way to have spectacularly noisy sex with his beloved wife, Jackie (Oscar winner Marlee Matlin ), a midlife sexpot in skinny jeans. Ruby rises every day at 3 a.m. to work alongside them, hauling in the daily catch before the sun is fully up. Then she pulls off her waders and heads to high school, where the mean girls make snide cracks about smelling fish when they pass her in the halls, and even her best friend Gertie (Amy Forsyth) can't understand why she wants to join something as deeply uncool as choir.

But music, which her family has no way of knowing — they can't hear her singing along to old Motown songs and Nina Simone while she works, or belting them out in her bedroom — is the thing that brings her the most joy.It also terrifies her though, so it takes a burgeoning crush on a classmate ( Sing Street 's Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) and the careful attentions of a teacher, Mr. Villalobos ( Eugenio Derbez ), to nudge her out of her skittish shell and closer toward the public performances she fears so much.

Heder, a writer and producer best known for her work on shows like Orange Is the New Black and Little America , never leaves any real doubt that Ruby will find her way when it comes to both first kisses and longer-range career plans. And CODA does often have the feel and scale less of big-screen moviemaking than of the television background she comes from, albeit expertly done (and with more than a few premium-cable profanities). But a handful of sitcom-ish moments seem like small glitches in a script that works so winningly to bring the often unseen (or just terminally under-explored) world of deafness to such joyful, ordinary life.

Jones — who trained intensively in voice work and American Sign Language for the role — has the gift of coming off like a genuine teenager, and more particularly a girl torn between her unique obligations to the people she loves and the bigger dreams she holds for herself. Matlin is great too, both tough and tenderhearted, though Durant and Kotsur deserve to be singled out for largely wordless performances that still convey so much in every scene: Anger, vulnerability, outrageous humor. Together, they somehow manage to make CODA feel like both the best and most familiar kind of family film, and one you've never quite seen before. Grade: B+

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CODA Reviews

Sian Heder delivers an emotional film that plays all the right notes to move the audience, much like a puppeteer controlling its marionette.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Sep 8, 2024

CODA has all the hallmarks of a Sundance darling. ... The thing is, it’s a formula that works, here yielding an entertaining, moving story that illuminates a community underrepresented onscreen.

Full Review | Jul 28, 2024

Though the film's conflict is nicely wrapped up by the end with predictability and little realistic effort, it doesn't take away from the heartwarming content, often humorous tone, and feel-good nature.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 15, 2024

It leaves you in a puddle of emotion, but by the end you realize it’s a good puddle. It’s a puddle of satisfaction, hope, and a full heart.

Full Review | Jul 3, 2024

Coda refuses to rehash the well-worn tropes of this May-December subgenre, swapping it out for an almost Bergman-like contemplativeness.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 20, 2023

CODA is a delight, a warm hug of a film that knows its genre and makes the very most of it. Siân Heder’s script is simple, and the message that she sends is heartfelt. A crowd-pleaser with love to spare.

Full Review | Sep 17, 2023

...weakening a film whose representation of the underrepresented is so intense at times that its dependence on Hallmark-like characteristics is more than mildly disappointing.

Full Review | Jul 27, 2023

A Must Watch Winner that will delight you

Full Review | Jul 26, 2023

Siân Heder offers her impeccable direction and beautifully written screenplay, which is packed with emotionally powerful moments that left me tearing up for the last forty-five minutes.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Jul 24, 2023

CODA is a simple, moving film with great performances.

Full Review | Jun 27, 2023

What so impressed me and makes this a movie I'd recommend is how writer and director Sian Heder used sound -- and the lack of sound -- to showcase the beauty and emotional power of music to connect with people.

Full Review | Mar 31, 2023

With one of the most clever scripts of the year, CODA made me feel a lot of feelings.

Full Review | Feb 10, 2023

"CODA is sweet, sincere and genuinely funny in parts, and it’s precisely the kind of coming-of-age film that we should hope to see more of. "

Full Review | Nov 19, 2022

...alternates between being contrived and genuinely moving.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 9, 2022

CODA is cathartic. A film that put a giant lump in your throat while at the same time lifting your spirits.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Oct 9, 2022

It’s a movie about a cute kid who wants to go off to Fancy School in the City. The deafness is very much incidental.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Aug 24, 2022

The humor makes for a great compliment to the coming-of-age drama which follows a pretty conventional blueprint but enhances it with a uniquely fresh perspective.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 17, 2022

Films like these highlight the differences and similarities and seek the bridge that gap as well as share a story of struggle, growth, and exploration. This film does all three magnificently and will bring audiences to tears.

Full Review | Aug 14, 2022

... The bones of The Belier Family are fleshed out in new, muscular ways by writer-director Sian Heder, working with deaf creative collaborators Anne Tomasetti and Alexandria Wailes.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 4, 2022

CODA works well to deliver effective drama, music and some comedy with character conflicts that are relatable.

Full Review | Jul 1, 2022