I Am Sam

“Daddy, did God mean for you to be like this, or was it an accident? That’s little Lucy Dawson, asking her father why he isn’t exactly like other people. She’s a smart kid and figures out the answer herself, and when a student at her Elementary School asks, “Why does your father act like a retard?” she explains, “He is.” “I Am Sam,” released in 2001, stars Chris Penn’s older brother, Sean Penn, as Lucy’s dad, Sam, who has the IQ of a 7-year-old but is trying to raise the daughter he fathered with a homeless woman. The mother, Rebecca, played by Caroline Keenan, disappeared right after giving birth (her farewell words: “All I wanted was a place to sleep”), and now Sam is doing his best to deal with this, despite sometimes Lucy has to help him with her homework. Eventually Lucy decides to stop learning so she won’t go further than her dad. “I don’t want to read if you can’t,” she tells him.

Same loves the Beatles (his favorite member is George). He named his daughter after Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, and has learned most of his life lessons from Beatles songs. The lesson “I Am Sam” wants to teach us, “All you need is love.” This is not completely true. Sam loves his daughter more than anyone else, and she loves him, but it will take more than love for him to get her through grade school and the teenage years and see her off as an adult after helping her get out there. Since the movie does not believe this, it has a serious disagreement with most of the audience.

Roger Ebert noted in his review, “Sean Penn does as well as can be expected with Sam, but it is painful to see an actor of his fire and range locked into a narrow range of emotional and intellectual responses. Not long ago a veteran moviegoer told me that when he sees an actor playing a mentally retarded person, he is reminded of a performer playing "Lady of Spain" on an accordion: The fingers fly, but are the song or the instrument worthy of the effort? The kind of performance Penn delivers in "I Am Sam," which may look hard, is easy, compared, say, to his amazing work in Woody Allen's "Sweet and Lowdown." As Robert Kohner observes in his Variety review: "In a way, Edward Norton's turn in "The Score" in which his thief used a mental handicap as a disguise, gave the trade secret away when it comes to this sort of performance."” The movie sets up the Department of Children and Family Services and its attorney as the antagonists when they take Lucy away from Sam and try to put her with a foster family. The savior is a tough, tenacious Beverly Hills lawyer named Rita, played by Michelle Pfeiffer, who takes Sam’s case on a pro bono basis, to prove to the other people in her office that she’s not a selfish jerk. This character and performance would be perfect in a tense comedy, but exist in a different reality to where this film takes place.

Sam has the types of problems that come up in story conferences more than in life. For example, he’s sitting in a diner when an attractive young woman smiles at him. He smiles back. She comes over and asks him if he would like to have a good time. He says he sure would. Then a cop jumps up and arrests him for visiting a prostitute. Back at the station, the cop admits, “This is the first time in 19 years I actually believe a guy who says he didn’t know she was a prostitute.” Actually, this is the first time in history that a man has been arrested on promiscuous charges for talking to a woman in a diner before any clothing is removed, money has been exchanged, or services have been talked about.

Ebert said, “The movie climaxes in a series of courtroom scenes, which follow the time-honored formulas for such scenes, with the intriguing difference that this time the evil prosecutor (Richard Schiff) seems to be making good sense.” At one point he turns mockingly to Rita and says, “This is an anecdote for you at some luncheon, but I’m here every day. You’re out the door, but you know who I see come back? The child.” Well, isn’t he correct? The apparent adoptive mother, played by Laura Dern, further causes problems with this dilemma by not being an evil child-beater who wants the monthly state payments, but a loving, sensitive mother who would probably be great for Lucy. Sam more or less understands this, but does the adoptive mother? As the film ends, the problem is in doubt.

“I Am Sam” is targeted at audiences who will related to an emotional relationship between Sam and Lucy, played by a young Dakota Fanning, who does a believable job as the smart daughter. Ebert noted, “Every device of the movie's art is designed to convince us Lucy must stay with Sam, but common sense makes it impossible to go the distance with the premise.” You can’t have heroes and villains when the wrong side is making the best sense.

My brother had told me about this movie, and I watched this On Demand one day. Be forewarned, this is a very emotional movie. Not to say that this isn’t a good movie and I recommend it, I do, but just be careful when watching this. I take it that this sort of case happened in real life before, but this is one of those movies that is hard to get through, but when you do, you feel relieved at the end. Check it out and see for yourself. I don’t know if I can ever watch this movie again, but if I do, I will have to contain myself.

Sorry for the late posting, I got sidetracked today with other work that I completely forgot to write this review. Now wait until next week when I finish off “Special Needs Month” with another movie I saw a glimpse of on cable one time that I checked out On Demand that is on par with this film.