Really retarded

>> I am Sam is just plain terrible

by MATTHEW HAYS

It used to be actors could earn the label “brave” by playing gay. Witness William Hurt or Tom Hanks, who managed to pick up Oscars for stretching so far as to pretend to swing that other way.

The other award magnet, of course, is playing mentally deficient (a pretty vital magnet, it seems, now that gay isn’t such a taboo any more). It worked for Cliff Robertson in Charly, Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man and Leonardo DiCaprio in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.

In I am Sam, Sean Penn carries the not-so-bright torch playing Sam, a retarded man (who also suffers from autism) who is also father to a young girl. After his naïveté gets him into trouble with a prostitute (who turns out to be an undercover cop), the police look into whether or not he’s fit to parent. Soon he’s at risk of losing his child in a nasty courtroom battle. Is he fit to parent? A well-meaning theme, for sure.

But not a well-done movie. I am Sam soon careens into all of the maudlin clichés we expect of this sub-genre: a caring neighbour (Diane Wiest) who loves Sam and his offspring stands by them in tough times; the soul-less yuppie lawyer who somehow gets roped into defending the retarded fellow (the experience ultimately allowing her to rediscover her soul); and the obligatory montages of Sam doing crazy, wacky things, with sentimental music playing over the footage. (A number of McCartney and Lennon’s most mawkish numbers are covered and shamelessly exploited here.)

Aside from the script, I am Sam suffers from some rather abrasive clashes in acting styles. Penn is acting by the Actor’s Studio handbook, delivering a fairly convincing performance as a retarded fellow. But his daughter is portrayed by an Aryan young thing who looks better suited to be selling breakfast cereal to Nazis—even by the standards of the school of Spielberg, this child is ridiculously polished. Worse still, she’s positioned as a child so precocious as to burst any suspension of disbelief. These two contrast even more sharply with Michelle Pfeiffer, who is handed an entirely thankless role as the corporate chick who’s lost her humanity while climbing the ambition ladder. Her teary-eyed confessions to Sam about her own downfalls as a parent are pat and silly.

The filmmakers also make several references to the movie Kramer vs. Kramer, apparently under the mistaken impression that by doing so audiences will somehow miss the fact that they’ve ripped off the ending to that movie. No such luck.

That I am Sam contains some virtuous themes could hardly be open to argument. Retards are people too, an extra chromosome shouldn’t rule out parenthood, and so on. Who could argue with these heartwarming thoughts?

But a much harder argument to make would be to suggest that I am Sam is actually a good movie. In fact, I would suggest that would be a virtually impossible argument to make. Really, the retarded deserve better than this. :

I am Sam opens Friday, Jan. 25