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I AM SAM Send This Review to a Friend
Sean Penn gives his all in a role that begs for sympathy and understanding. Penn poignantly plays Sam, a mentally challenged father battling for the right to keep and raise his young daughter despite the do-gooder social work efforts to take the child away and place her with a foster couple. Sam, although in his thirties, functions at a mental age of seven, but this does not preclude his deep love for Lucy (Dakota Fanning) and his ability to relate warmly to her. He also can do more fathering than he is credited with being able to accomplish.
But life is stacked against Sam, who was left with Lucy when her homeless mother abandoned her to Sam shortly after Lucy was born. He struggles with menial jobs and as hard as he tries, he screws up in various ways. But he never wavers from devotion to Lucy and the film raises important issues with regard to how society treats the mentally challenged.
Penn's performance incorporates the physical aspects of speech and body language that can go with Sam's condition and doesn't pull any punches in what certainly looms as an actor's special challenge. He telegraphs the utmost sincerity throughout and one must admire his dedication to the role as well as his talent.
The hope for Sam comes from his enlisting the help of a hotshot lawyer named Rita Harrison, played by Michelle Pfeiffer. Callously ambitious, she is hardly known for pro bono work, but Sam is relentless in his desperate pursuit, and although Harrison resists getting involved, her pity takes over and she is soon overcome by his need. As we know she will, she takes his case.
But the screenplay by director Jessie Nelson and Kristine Johnson doesn't leave well enough alone. Fighting for Sam's rights would be enough to have on the plate. But in this screenplay Sam must change Harrison's life. It is a case of the victim having the script burden of showing the way to his defender, a cliché of films meant to be uplifting. On that score "I Am Sam" becomes corny, cluttered and contrived. It attempts too much and is thereby weakened, even though Pfeiffer gives a well-rounded, sympathetically convincing performance of her own.
But basically this is Penn's show. He is the one who turns on the juice and the tears, and the film stands or falls on what he is able to communicate emotionally. This he does powerfully even though there is a level of monotony to spending all that time with a character who must struggle so hard from moment to moment. Strong supporting performances are supplied by a cast that includes Dianne Wiest and Laura Dern. A New Line Cinema reelease.
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