‘What?’ Film Review: Deaf Actor Fights the System in Well-Intentioned Showbiz Comedy

thewrap.com:

th century comedians. To the filmmakers’ credit, the notion that early, silent cinema was inherently more inclusive for deaf people is a powerful point.Most of the plot points in “What?” — even the title that refers to how others often respond to Don trying to communicate — relate to the character’s difficulty to connect with the hearing majority while trying to explain misconceptions about the deaf community.

It’s a crash course for hearing audiences that includes ideas as obvious as the fact that, just like with spoken language, there are hundreds of different sign languages — the Catalan and German versions exemplify this here.True to the silent-film era that it references, the humor in “What?” comes off as rather broad — and by today’s standards, even hammy — because of the physicality and overacting employed to get across emotional beats.

Maucere’s downhearted charisma and earnestness counteracts the more cartoonish supporting performances. There’s a kindness and a gravitas to his interpretation of Don that makes the film’s cringier aspects tolerable.In some instances, the humor derives from the quotidian difficulties faced by deaf individuals condemns how we collectively fail to accommodate those with disabilities and tacitly expect them to find a way around the barriers hearing people have created for their own comfort.