It's a well-made movie but I don't find the girl believable, sometimes. She's a bit too hyper. But then, what do I know...
She acts like me, so much so that it freaked my husband out when we saw the movie. He was seriously looking like
And I agree that she doesn't seem much like what anyone would expect.
Jerry Newport said on WP that most of her behavior and personality are due to her PTSD, not AS. The movie skips over all the stuff that happened to her before she met Jerry. Her parents turned her over to the Children of God cult when she was about 14. Apparently they were both professors and didn't want to admit that she had an autistic disorder. Later, she got romantically involved with a psycho Vietnam vet who took her hostage. So she's got quite a bit of "stuff" going on that the movie failed to detail.
I liked the book a lot. It made me feel better to read it, because I felt ashamed when people on WP were making fun of her character in the movie. It helped me realize why I acted so different from most of them, and from people in my AS support group.