Grade B/C
Excluding romantic comedies and Jerry Bruckheimer-produced disaster films, Hollywood’s bread and butter are heartwarming tearjerkers that help remind us of love conquering all.
The most successful ingredient in many of these films are disabled characters that the audience can’t help falling in love with because of their adorable inability to lie and manipulate–unlike the rest of us. The Forrest Gumps and Rain Men have moved us to tears, made us appreciate our loved ones, and won Oscars for those portraying them.
The previous two examples have not only won Hollywood’s top prize, but have become cinematic icons quoted to exhausting levels by their audiences. However, Tom Hanks and Dustin Hoffman had focused direction, moving scripts, and fun characterizations to help make their performances memorable.
Sean Penn was not quite as fortunate in “I Am Sam.”
Directed by family-drama-oriented screenwriter Jessie Nelson, “I Am Sam” stars the unlikely Penn (“Sweet and Lowdown”) as Sam, a mentally challenged coffee shop employee with a seven-year-old daughter, Lucy (newcomer Dakota Fanning) and an odd fixation on the Beatles.
As she grows, Lucy’s mental capabilities are quickly surpassing those of her father, and after he is falsely arrested for conversing with a hooker, family services enters the picture and begins to question Sam’s capabilities as a father.
After Lucy is taken away from her father, Sam seeks aid from junk-food-addicted, high-power attorney Rita, (Michelle Pfeiffer, “What Lies Beneath”) who is guilted into taking the case pro bono from her colleagues and the state of her own crumbling family.
From here, the film enters the courtroom and falls into the trap of including the David vs. Goliath struggle, an almost satanically cruel prosecuting attorney and the emotional flogging of every teary witness to take the stand.
Nelson seems to try to hide these traps by using heavy-handed camera work and adding an out-of-place blue tone to the film’s look. However, despite its formulaic tendencies, “I Am Sam” does manage to stay consistent in telling the story of an extraordinary father-daughter relationship, mostly due to its wonderful cast.
Twenty years after Jeff Spicoli, Sean Penn is still one of the most gifted actors in American film today. Given his very public loathing of Hollywood and films that are conventional and formulated, he seems an unlikely candidate for this character but ends up proving that he is one of the few actors out there that could have pulled it off.
Like his predecessors, Penn’s Sam is a happy/sad portrayal of a man whose disability is as smilingly adorable as it is heart-wrenchingly painful. But unlike Hanks or Hoffman, Penn’s characterization is more humanistic and less fodder for unforgettable one-liners.
As the crumbling wife and mother, Pfeiffer is as good as ever. However, a film of this sort makes her character too predictable as a mother who first pities, then envies Sam for the kind of love he receives from his child.
After two relatively different careers that have begun at roughly the same time, the two actors come together nicely and have chemistry that is never competitive, but more complimentary. As Penn’s seven-year-old Lucy, Dakota acts with considerable ease and is as adorable as she is talented.
However, despite heartfelt performances from the cast (which also includes Dianne Wiest and Laura Dern), the film seems to focus all of its energy in the most predicable places. The film practically holds an onion into the audience’s face in its attempt to get it to cry, and the Beatles references seem to be over-abundantly used as a means to make Penn’s Sam cool or cute.
“I Am Sam” may not be the most perfect work out there, but it can’t help striking a nerve with its audience and making us feel the love in such powerful relationships. That may not be very cool, but that doesn’t make it bad.