I Am Sam: Cry Me a River

By Teddy Durgin
tedfilm@aol.com

Have you ever gone to Sea World or any of those other water theme parks where they have whales and dolphins that jump through hoops and dance on their tails? The first few rows of the grandstands are usually painted aqua blue to indicate "Splash Area." If you sit in one of those seats, you're gonna get soaked from the live performance.

They should have similar seats at screenings of I Am Sam (going into wide release this Friday). It has been a long, LONG time
since I have seen a movie so ruthlessly and relentlessly go for the tears as this one does! If you cry easily during movies, you might want to take some bottled water to this one. I wouldn't want you to become dehydrated by the end of it.

I Am Sam tells the story of a retarded man (Sean Penn) who tries to retain custody of his 7-year-old daughter, Lucy (Dakota Fanning), even as the state seeks to take her away from him and put her in a two-parent foster household.

CHALLENGED MAN WALKIN'!

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Sam Dawson has been diagnosed with mental retardation and autistic tendencies. He has the mind of a seven-year-old, and he will never be any smarter. He can serve coffee at Starbucks and maintain a small apartment, but little else. The details are a bit sketchy, but apparently Sam got lucky one night with a homeless woman. Nine months later, she gave birth to Lucy, then skipped town. With help from a reclusive neighbor (Dianne Wiest), Sam raises the girl from birth. But problems start to crop up as Lucy begins school. She starts to grow smarter than Sam. She knows how to order in different restaurants, read big words, and express complex thoughts. Before long, she is doing things for her father, rather than the other way around. Sensing that this is a bad thing, Lucy shuts down. She starts to resist her teachers, resist learning.

Eventually, the state steps in (after Sam is arrested for mistaking a hooker for a friendly woman ... didn't the same thing happen to Mr. Furley a half-dozen times on Three's Company?! Ugh.) Lucy is placed with a loving couple (Laura Dern and some guy who gets about two seconds of face time), and Sam is left to survive on his own. He enlists the aid of Rita Harrison (Michelle Pfeiffer), a workaholic yuppie attorney who takes his case pro bono and ultimately uses the "All you need is love" defense to plead Sam's case.

Now, let me just say upfront that Penn does an extraordinary job in the title role. His is a flawless technical performance, and I marveled at the consistency the actor brought to the role. He never once gives Sam any more intelligence in his eyes or mannerisms than such a person would have, and for a long while, I was really pulling for the character to find his way through the legal and emotional maze he is put through.

HOWEVER, director and co-writer Jessie Nelson goes too far overboard in appealing to the audience's sympathies, and the film eventually drowns itself in its own good intentions. Seriously, if Nelson had actually been sitting next to me in the theater chopping onions and twisting my nipples, she couldn't have tried any harder in her attempts to jerk tears out of my eyes. About two-thirds of the way through, I found myself fighting the film, resisting it and its message. I just wanted the whole thing to stop.

Weird feeling, man.

Part of the problem is that I didn't buy into the film's message. I just don't think it argues its stance successfully. It didn't convince me that Lucy (who is so precious, I wanted to take care of her) would be better off with Sam and not her middle-class foster parents who want to adopt her. Call me a heartless bastard, but all you need is NOT love. Of course, love is the most important thing in the parent-child relationship. But, in the film, Lucy is put into a loving home where she will be given opportunities and care that Sam or anyone like Sam can't possibly give her. Furthermore, the State of California in the film is not seeking to exclude Sam from his daughter's life. Even the foster parents agree that he should still have generous visitation rights, that he should still be an active part of Lucy's world.

But Nelson and company can only have it one way. The world MUST accept Sam as Lucy's only and rightful parent. And Sam is made so puppy-dog precious that not siding with him would be like rejecting the whole idea of love itself. Furthermore, the film raises moral questions that the filmmakers aren't prepared to answer. How will Sam be as a parent when Lucy is 10? Thirteen? Sweet sixteen?

Look, if the filmmakers' goal was to make a tearjerker, they have more than succeeded. Everyone involved in the project has put their heart and soul into the story. To anyone reading this: If you want a good cry, by all means, see I Am Sam! When the closing credits finally rolled, I looked back at the audience in the preview screening I attended, and 90 percent of them were using everything from napkins and handkerchiefs to shirt sleeves and the theater's seat cushions to dry their eyes.

Simply put. They bought the film, and I didn't.

I listened in on some of the conversations, and most compared I Am Sam to Rain Man. But I think that's a terrible comparison. Rain Man EARNED its tears. There was an emotional honesty to that film that I Am Sam just doesn't have. Ultimately, Rain Man succeeded because it didn't give us some fantasy-world conclusion. Charlie Babbitt found out that he couldn't take care of his autistic brother, Raymond, and that the best place for him was back at the care facility. That's life, cruel as it is. Rain Man gets put on the train, Charlie promises to come visit, the train leaves the station, the credits roll ... Teddy reaches for his hankie!

By contrast, I Am Sam goes for this jive, fantasy-world resolution in which the angelic challenged man has made everyone around him see the importance of love. I guess I wanted the movie to deal more honestly with the legal issues it raises. I wanted it to provoke as much thought and discussion afterward as it did tears.

In the end, I couldn't see the Forrest Gump for the trees.

I Am Sam is rated PG-13.