In defence of a dad

10 April 2012

Now Sean Penn can join Cliff (Charly) Robertson, Dustin (Rainman) Hoffman and Edward (The Score) Norton and claim disability points for playing a mental retard. Oscar voters, however, refused to applaud. No wonder: this crudely simplified, lachrymose and patronising story of a man whose mental age (seven) is rapidly being overtaken by his illegitimate child's chronological age puts all your charitable feelings to the test. It spells out its story in alphabet blocks.

Penn's Sam, looking like a woebegone Stan Laurel suffering from Novocaine injections, works as a waiter in a local Starbucks - the movie's sole irony is a brief shot of no fewer than three Starbucks franchises in the same street - where everyone just loves his constant caw of congratulations when they order a cafe mocha: "A good choice." When he has taken off his apron and rushed home at the hobble that Penn believes connotes weakness in the left-frontal lobes, an idyllic child called Lucy (after Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds) embraces him, and holds back on her own reading progress so that she shan't outstrip dad's success with Dr Seuss.

Sam's middle-ageing cronies are four other mentally disadvantaged buddies, though one of them can quote the director and year of every movie that's been made (or at least those in the video store).

This urban fairy tale, directed by a woman, Jessie Nelson, whose skills seem to have been developed for elementary-school playgroups, ends when the Department of Child and Family Services intervenes to put Lucy (Dakota Fanning) into care. Enter Michelle Pfeiffer as the pricy lawyer whose own guilt over a marital bust-up makes her lower her charge-by-the-hour advocacy for a pro bono defence of Sam.

The courtroom hearings are interminable, but boil down to the insultingly simplistic choice of the kind of parent who's best for Lucy - one with "intellect" or one with "love". Next case, please.

Pfeiffer looks as if she has the face of a much younger woman painted on her own and boy, doesn't she suffer for being a power-lady with a career and a swimming pool, but also a neglected brat of a child and a husband who's gone off without even taking his 10 suits out of the closet. In Sam, she finds fulfilment, if not a fee.

I rooted almost audibly for the opposing attorney (Richard Schiff) who dares to hint that perhaps someone mentally immature isn't the best choice to leave in charge of a little girl starting, as they put it, to "develop". I'd even have given a warm round of applause if that one-time professional man-child Pee Wee Herman could have taken Penn's place: he'd have fitted in nicely with Nelson's formula of following up every one of Sam's setbacks with a spirits-raising little pop jingle on the soundtrack. Pee Wee could have sung along.

I Am Sam
Cert: cert12

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