Lyn and I watched Inside I’m dancing last night. She hadn’t seen it before, and I was interested to hear what she thought about it. To be honest, I don’t think I was as impressed as when I was when I first saw it in the cinema: there seemed to be more flaws in it, things that did not seem realistic. Now I’m living more or less independently, employing my own staff, I was sitting on the sofa picking holes in it, like a MI5 agent watching a bond movie. Mind you, when I asked Lyn whether institutions are really like ho they are presented in the film, with adults just sat in their wheelchairs, parked in front of the TV to watch mindless cartoons for hours on end, to my disappointment she said that it was.

The biggest thing that got to me this time, though, was the quality of the acting. What I didn’t know when I first watched the film was that the two central disabled figures were actually played by nondisabled people. Looking back, I’m aghast that I missed that – it’s obvious. Nobody can portray a guy with CP if thy don’t have CP. Despite the thousands of out of work crip actors out there, they go and choose two non-crips, who probably know nothing of the realities behind what they are portraying, to take the lead in the biggest crip-themed film of recent times. Pathetic! On top of that, last night the film seemed mawkish and sentimental, as if it romanticised disability in a way. Although I got into bed last night feeling like I had just watched a good film, it did have it’s flaws; it’s a shame because it could have been a great opportunity to increase awareness of disability issues; instead we got something safe and inoffensive to the general public, and no doubt two actors got lorded for their oh so heroic portrayal of disabled people.