The Unbreakable Boy (2025): hope, hurt, and a family that refuses to crack
Some stories are built to go loud; this one is built to glow. The Unbreakable Boy is a small, heart-on-sleeve biographical drama about a family stubborn enough to love through diagnoses, detours, and the messy in-between. Written and directed by Jon Gunn, it adapts Scott Michael LeRette’s memoir about parenting his son Austin, who lives with osteogenesis imperfecta (brittle-bone disease) and is on the autism spectrum. The movie aims for a soft, luminous uplift rather than fireworks, leaning into the idea that joy can be an act of resistance.
Who made it (and who’s in it)?
- Director/Writer: Jon Gunn (from a screenplay he also wrote). Gunn steers the film with the patient cadence of a family journal, favoring intimate moments over grand melodrama.
- Studios/Distributor: Produced by Kingdom Story Company and released by Lionsgate, a pairing familiar to audiences who’ve followed faith-adjacent, true-story dramas in the past.
The principal cast (and “how many casts in this movie The Unbreakable Boy”):
The film’s principal ensemble features roughly a dozen key players, led by:
- Zachary Levi as Scott LeRette (father)
- Jacob Laval as Austin
- Meghann Fahy as Teresa (mother)
- Drew Powell as Joe
- Patricia Heaton as Marcia
- Gavin Warren as Logan (Austin’s brother)
- Peter Facinelli as Pastor Rick
- Amy Acker, Todd Terry, Kevin Downes, Pilot Bunch, and Roy Jackson Miller (as young Austin) rounding out the primary roles.
In total, the movie credits dozens of performers, but the core, named ensemble sits at ~12—the faces you’ll track scene to scene. (If you browse the full credits pages, you’ll see many additional day-players and supporting roles.)
Where this film sits—its niche.
Call it inspirational true-story family drama with faith-friendly undertones. This is the Kingdom Story Company lane: polished, PG-rated, hope-forward films that try to meet families where they live—doctor visits, money worries, marriage strain—and remind them that tenderness is a kind of strength. The presence of Lionsgate positions it for wide but targeted theatrical play, especially in markets that reliably turn out for message-driven dramas and memoir adaptations.
More specifically, The Unbreakable Boy aims to speak to:
- Parents/caregivers managing complex medical and developmental realities.
- Faith-adjacent audiences open to stories about grace and personal recovery, without overt sermonizing.
- Viewers interested in disability narratives that foreground dignity and daily life instead of “superhuman” metaphor.
The story without spoilers (well, just the needed ones).
We meet Scott and Teresa as a new couple trying to catch their breath. Their son Austin arrives with immediate challenges—his first hours include a fracture that reveals osteogenesis imperfecta—and as he grows, behavioral patterns lead to an autism diagnosis. The script toggles between medical logistics and family micro-dramas: school tensions, stranger stares, sibling dynamics, and the slow-motion stress test a household endures when every plan is brittle.
Gunn’s approach banks on Austin’s irrepressible joy—the kid who wears a jester hat, quotes favorite stories, and finds wonder where other people see a wall. The Unbreakable Boy Mean while, Scott’s arc bends through self-reckoning—work strain, a drinking problem, and shame—toward something humbler and sturdier: showing up. When the film remembers to let Austin’s perspective color the frame, it finds warmth and texture; when it drifts too far into convention, you feel the seams.
What works.
1) Performances with quiet lift.
Zachary Levi plays Scott like a man who’s sprinted out of excuses—still funny, still soft around the eyes, but brittle where it counts. Jacob Laval (Austin) gives the movie its heartbeat: literal dances of delight, sudden storms, and that post-storm light children sometimes carry like a superpower. Meghann Fahy supplies ballast—Teresa’s patience never reads as saintly; it reads as work.
2) Texture of the everyday.
Hospitals, school hallways, grocery checkout lines: the film spends time in places where small humiliations and small solidarities occur. That attention to the daily can be quietly radical in a genre that often chases climaxes.
3) A true-story spine.
Memoir adaptations stand or wobble on authenticity. The scenario here—bone-deep fatigue, imperfect apologies, relapse fear, inch-by-inch repair—feels lived-in, and interviews around the release underscore that this is a family trying to tell the truth about itself.
What doesn’t always land.
1) Perspective drift.
Some critics argued the film hedges when it should center Austin’s point of view, defaulting instead to the parent’s arc and familiar “inspiration” beats. The result can feel too tidy for a story that insists life isn’t.
2) Sentiment management.
The movie wants uplift—and often earns it—but occasionally pushes the violins. In a subgenre allergic to cynicism, that’s not a mortal sin, but it may limit crossover appeal. Critical response ultimately landed in the mixed column, even as CinemaScore audiences graded it an “A.”
Craft notes (the nuts and bolts).
Runtime: 109 minutes—right in the pocket for a theatrical drama aimed at families who need weeknight logistics to work.
Music: Pancho Burgos-Goizueta’s score stays understated, more sunlight than spotlight.
Shot on location: Principal photography took place in Oklahoma in late 2020, which accounts for the Midwestern textures and open-sky look.
Release journey: Originally slated for March 2022, the film was pulled eight days before release and rescheduled to February 21, 2025—the kind of delay that can scramble awareness but also, in this case, set it apart from crowded seasons.
Why the box office looks the way it does.
A $7.5M global gross in 2025 isn’t a “miss” so much as a targeted outcome for a PG true-story drama without franchise hooks. The opening weekend number (~$2.4M) reflected exactly the audience the film was built for—multi-generational families, church groups, and viewers hungry for non-cynical, PG material. What it didn’t do was spark a word-of-mouth breakout beyond that base, in part because the film’s gentleness is both its charm and its ceiling.
The film’s heartbeat: themes & takeaways.
Unbreakable ≠ unhurt. The title doesn’t claim Austin’s bones won’t break; it insists his spirit won’t. The script keeps circling this paradox: fragility and resilience are not opposites, they’re roommates. When Austin laughs after a setback, you feel the movie’s thesis: gratitude can be learned, but sometimes children come preloaded with it.
Addiction and amends. Scott’s redemption arc is not presented as a clean line. There’s a late-movie reckoning that’s as much about accepting limits as about changing behavior, a choice that dodges triumphalism and honors the messy work of being a dad who shows up, again and again.
Community and kindness. The film’s best scenes often involve ordinary people—a store clerk, a teacher, a pastor—who meet Austin where he is. The cumulative effect suggests a worldview: institutions matter, but small mercies change days (and therefore lives).
Faith as frame, not cudgel. Kingdom Story productions tend to build in gentle Christian framing—prayer, church, grace language—without turning scenes into sermons. That approach is intentional; the film is for an audience that recognizes those rhythms, but it’s pitched to be legible to anyone.
Performances worth calling out.
Zachary Levi threads humor and shame without tipping into mawkishness, giving Scott a boyishness that makes his stumbles sting.
Jacob Laval is the secret sauce—his Austin isn’t a symbol; he’s a kid, full stop, and the performance resists flattening him into “lessons.”
Meghann Fahy brings tensile strength as Teresa, calibrating exhaustion, protectiveness, and real joy.
Patricia Heaton and Drew Powell add warmth and a touch of comic buoyancy right when the film risks getting heavy.
The culture around the film of The Unbreakable Boy.
As the release rolled out, press around Scott LeRette (the real father) emphasized how his son’s joy and stubborn optimism helped catalyze his sobriety—an off-screen echo of the movie’s on-screen arc, and a reminder that the memoir’s power is tied to lived transformation, not just a neat plot turn.
Final verdict: who should watch this?
If you’re the kind of viewer who loved Wonder, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, or smaller, memoir-rooted dramas that swap spectacle for sincerity, The Unbreakable Boy will likely land for you. It’s PG, family-ready, and calibrated for communities who want to see disability and difference handled with gentle respect, even if the storytelling sometimes colors inside the lines. If you need tonal edge or formal daring, this won’t scratch that itch; if you need grace under pressure, it will.
