Rowan is autistic. At age 5, he’s spiraling deeper into obsessive
behavior, social disconnection, and daily tantrums that crash like
waves and can last for hours. He’s almost unreachable, but when he
connects with animals he’s calm and talkative and, remarkably,
communicative. Taking Rowan from his Austin, Texas, home to the steppes
of Mongolia—riding on horseback from shaman to shaman in hopes of
some kind of spiritual cure—is a bit of a vague logical leap, but
why not? Conventional medicine isn’t working. “It’s just absurd,”
recalls mom about the initial idea, a skepticism that Rupert—dad,
narrator, and project mastermind—echoes throughout. He makes a
show of questioning his motivations without ever acknowledging or
explaining an even more radical part of the project: He invites a
camera crew to follow them. This is a documentary as spiritual odyssey
and personal journey, but just whose journey are we really getting?
The Horse Boy intelligently and sympathetically addresses the
reality of autism and how little we actually understand the condition,
and there’s no doubting that Rowan’s parents have the best intentions.
But the line between documentation and exploitation gets awfully
blurred as we realize that part of this intimate family adventure is an
intrusive camera crew in Rowan’s face. It’s an educational experience
for the audience, but is it healthy for an autistic child ripped from
the comfort of his routine? “All I know is, we went to the shamans and
now this is happening,” offers Rupert rather disingenuously. I suppose
it feels good to believe, but the rest of his story, especially the
therapeutic properties of animals, gets lost in an embrace of spiritual
healing that would seem suspicious from an American faith healer. 
It’s because of the vaccine.
And by that, I mean we can blame the loathsome parent and – likely – the screening of this swill at Truth Boat Refusers Won Out conventions – on autism. And autism we can blame on Jenny McCarthy’s loathsome habit of speaking when there is a camera nearby.
The most difficult aspect of viewing this ‘Pushy Parent and Proud Production’ was separating the real emotive issue of a small boy with autism from the over-anxious “it’s all about me” dad … believe me it wasn’t easy.
What struck me was the ease with which Rupert made a hugely expensive executive decision, without having to go through the normal process of scrimping, scraping, cudgelling businesses for sponsorship, and funds … In one clip Rupert admitted he had taken Rowan on the amusement park train ‘hundreds of times’ … obviously not living on any sort of limited budget are we Rupert?
Costs were never mentioned, nor was there any mention of the fact that many North American First Nations have similar Shamanist traditions … Cree, Lakota, Costal Shalish, and other ‘bands’ … but then again that would negate any need for an exotic and very cinematic ‘journey of self-discovery’ to Outer Mongolia.
The original motivation for this ‘noble and heroic quest’ – a seemingly mystical equine connection between boy and horse seemed to suffer quite a bit of ‘mission creep’, and no small amount of dilution, as Rowan rather obviously didn’t seem ‘connect’ with his Mongolian mounts as well as he had with ‘Betsy’!
‘Kalahari’ Rupert didn’t waste an opportunity to share the camera frame with his son … no matter how undignified, intrusive or seemingly gratuitous it seemed.
My heart went out to Rowan and his almost invisible ‘bit-part’ mum Kristin, who were elbowed aside by Rupert’s combined emotional catharsis and epiphany which took centre stage, stripped naked and rode around the ring on a matching pair horses named ‘vanity’ and ‘egotism’.
Rupert and Kristin clearly love their son, but as Rupert heaped cliché upon cliché this story had as much to do with Rowan’s evolution as boy, as ‘The Wizard of Oz’ was Toto’s a tale of his life with a farm girl. The one curious question which Rupert did manage to answer was, ‘whatever happened to those annoying, pseudo-intelligentsial, yuppies?
My admiration was reserved for the aboriginal nomadic native Mongolian Shaman whose only reward was a shake of those blonde locks and a Sloane Ranger style ‘thank you masked man’ …
Don’t try this at home if you are Mongolian or an average autistic family …