I Am Sam

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I Am Sam

I Am Sam:

Sam (Sean Penn) is a mentally-challenged father whose daughter Lucy (Dakota Fanning) has been taken from him by Social Services. He must now fight a court battle he knows nothing about to get Lucy back before she is permanently adopted by her foster family. Sam manages to find a lawyer by the name of Rita (Michelle Pfeiffer) who winds up representing him in court. Rita, while representing Sam, must deal with her own family difficulties as well.

PROS: Sean Penn plays a mentally-challenged individual very well. I can't say that he does so as well as Dustin Hoffman, but he's pretty close. 7 year-old, Dakota Fanning also does a great job playing Lucy. It's rare when you can get a child actor to act out a range of emotions and outside of Haley Joel Osment, I'd say she was the best I've seen in recent times. Rounding out the good stuff is the movie's soundtrack which is almost exclusively all Beatles covers from various artists. Interlaced into the movie are also numerous Beatles references which were pretty cool for a Beatles fan.

CONS: The movie was a valiant effort but it does comes up a bit short. The problem was mainly in the script where the story was presented in what seemed to be a very unpolished and tacky manner. It's was almost like a first draft of a script that never went through any rewrites or revisions. The director (Jessie Nelson) might also need to go back to film school as well because the constant quick cuts became irritating in a hurry.

I can't say that I'm leaning either way on this movie as the pros and cons seem to even each other out. If you're looking for a well-written script, then this may not be for you. But if you're a Beatle-maniac, you can go watch it to pick out all the Beatles references or listen to the music. You make the call.

-Tso