Saw The Black Balloon, a film about a teeager growing up with his low-functioning autistic brother. His father is involved somehow in the Army, his mother is pregnant and he's a teenager who must now start pulling his weight. It's quickly established that he feels neglected by his parents, living in the shadow of his needy and obnoxious brother. The brother is portrayed as a sort of force of nature, a capricious source of chaos in their lives that is sometimes quietly playing video games, sometimes leaping about the house screaming. All of these things must just be endured but this is hard for a young man.
To complicate his life further, he's going to some rich-kids school where they're perpetually learning to become lifeguards. There he gets one of those impossibly perfect girlfriends that only exist in movies about learning to deal with life. She's played with charm but kind of only exists to be sweet and understanding.
There's a good scene with her where the protagonist is mortified by his brother's behavior only to have her shrug it off as no big deal. This is kind of the nut of the film. Most everyone understands about disabled relatives - there's no need to be embarrassed. And similarly, there's nothing to be gained by wishing that the situation were different. It is this way, so try to help out okay?
Since this is a feel-good movie, everything ultimately works out but it would have been interesting to see a failure state. Sometimes, surely, we can't handle what we are given. What then? There's some climactic conflict where the protagonist rages against the world for inflicting this burden on him, but he has a strong father, a patient mother, and an angelic girlfriend (and also a Super Nintendo that is clearly bootleg.)
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