Sometimes, a civil servant has a thankless job. Not only do the actors who play civil servants in “I Am Sam” have thankless jobs, but so do the other fine actors in this ensemble cast. Sean Penn stars as Sam Dawson, a Starbucks employee with a mental capacity of a seven-year-old. He’s also a single father (the mother is a homeless woman who disappeared back into the streets after giving birth) with a young daughter, Lucy Diamond (Dakota Fanning), who eventually exceeds his mental ability. For several years, Sam meets Lucy’s needs with the help of a neighbor, Annie Cassell (Dianne Wiest). However, when Sam is falsely arrested for soliciting a prostitute, and Lucy draws a picture for school depicting herself as larger than her father, the civil servants ride to the rescue.

A social worker, Margaret Calgrove (Loretta Devine), and a public guardian attorney, Mr. Turner (Richard Schiff), manage to work within the system to take custody of Lucy and to petition the court for hearing to determine Sam’s ability take care of her. They place Lucy with foster parents, and set visitation for Sam. The young wife caring for Lucy, Randy Carpenter (Laura Dern), has every intention of adopting her. To help with his defense, Sam, on the advice of his mentally challenged friends, blunders into the offices of a high-priced, no-nonsense attorney, Rita Harrison (Michelle Pfeiffer). At first, she says she’ll refer Sam to a lawyer who specializes in child custody cases, even though she is lying. However, when Sam has court-appointed meetings to attend, and still has no lawyer, Rita is goaded by colleagues into taking Sam’s case pro bono. Soon, she discovers that even though she has won all of her previous cases, she’s searching for answers to provide a credible defense for a man who relates to life through his daughter and through the songs of the Beatles.

“I Am Sam” makes a very good case that Sam should not have sole custody of Lucy. Sam is a person who has an I.Q. about one or two points higher than Rain Man, and has mild autism. In one scene, Sam gets upset when he can’t order the same food in one restaurant that he does in another place that is a favorite of his. During the court proceedings, Sam and his friends constantly speak out of turn. The friends even bring signs reading “Free Lucy Dawson” as if she were an American equivalent of Nelson Mandela. The script by Jessie Nelson and Kristine Johnson may have had a head at one point, but apparently these ladies decided it would be best to decapitate said head. As a result, “I Am Sam” has a heart that bleeds sap for over two hours, and feels longer than “The Lord Of The Rings.” Nelson, who also directed, gives the picture a home movie feel, with plenty of close-ups, shaky camera work, and quick cuts to suggest just that. Nelson, as a result, reduces a movie that’s supposed to be serious to a fairy tale.

Sean Penn has proven that he is not only one of the very best actors working today, but he also has skill in directing, such as last year’s “The Pledge.” When I see him acting in a film like “I Am Sam,” I feel that he couldn’t have directed himself any worse than Nelson, whose last directorial effort was the 1994 pathos vehicle “Corrina, Corrina,” starring Whoopi Goldberg. Penn and all of the other actors rise above the material, making their characters believable. Penn brings across all the love and all of the confusion in Sam. He shows how loving he can be, reading “Green Eggs And Ham” to Lucy. In order to prove he’s fit, he gets his boss to allow him to make coffee for the customers. That experiment proves to be a disaster, as he spills coffee and quickly gets lost. On top of that, he has to go to court, smelling of coffee. Pfeiffer also does a good job as Rita, who learns that defending Sam is much more than a professional challenge.

Unfortunately, Nelson makes “I Am Sam” an exercise in audience manipulation. Everything in the script is forced toward the acceptance of Sam as the person who is the best parent for Lucy. In the real world, we know that court-forced reunions between children and their natural parents have, too often, ended tragically. The bond between father and daughter in “I Am Sam” is, without its intervention, headed for its own sort of tragedy. Instead of trying to bring about a reunion that will grow more ineffective over time, I wish that the aim of the film would have been geared to getting the Sam all the help he needed to meet the needs of both him and Lucy. I wanted the best for them, as well as for the people who became a part of their lives. Instead of giving us any real solutions, “I Am Sam” gives us way too much bathos. Love is not all you need, especially if you’re Sam or Lucy Dawson. Like this picture, they need all the help they can get.

Recommended:
No

Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age