Rita, Sam's frazzled lawyer, devotes herself to her career and neglects her husband and (oh, the irony!) her child.ĭoes Rita learn a few truths about parenting from Sam? Does the movie steal not one but two scenes directly from "Kramer vs. Offsetting all this goodness is - well, somebody who's good at heart, but a bit lost. We all have our disabilities, the film tells us. ("Did God mean for you to be like this?" she asks Dad.) Their neighbor Annie (Dianne Wiest), who helps with child care, is also saintly - and an agoraphobic. Lucy (Dakota Fanning) is a blond angel wise beyond her years.
Sam, played by Penn with a gaping mouth and flawlessly styled hair, is a perfect saint, devoted to his daughter and loved by all. (How on earth did Sam manage for seven years, on his near-minimum-wage job and minimal support system? Never mind the film doesn't really want us to think about it.) Seven years pass, presumably uneventfully (!), until Sam's parenting rights are challenged and he must hire a hotshot lawyer (Michelle Pfeiffer) to defend his right to be a dad.
#I AM SAM FILM SERIES#
Through a series of implausible events, he becomes the single parent of an infant daughter, Lucy. Sam (Sean Penn) is a developmentally disabled man who works in a Starbucks, obsesses over the Beatles, watches movies with his friends, and - the typical condescending Hollywood shorthand for such characters - wears pants that are too short. It's an appropriate start for a movie so drenched in sweetness that it's devoid of reality, and so free of leavening flavors that, despite some good performances, it's ultimately sickening. The film shifts gear as the lovely little Lucy Diamond is taken out of the picture and Rita, in all her compulsive-obsessive glory, becomes the focus of Sams. Rarely can a film's essence be summed up in its very first shot, but such is the case with "I Am Sam," which starts off with a pair of hands sorting out sugar packets.
0 kommentar(er)
