(The scene in which Dern, who plays Lucy's suspicious foster mother, relents to the Tao of Sam is as bizarre as anything David Lynch could ever dream up.) Director and co-screenwriter Nelson not only undercuts the movie's intentions with such inane dialogue and contrivances, but deals it a death blow with her insistence on using a nervy, hand-held camera throughout. We're also told point-blank that simply knowing Sam can change even the most messed-up of lives, but we don't believe it for a second. When a social worker asks Lucy in an interview what she needs from her father, she deadpans, “All you need is love,” in keeping with the Beatles leitmotif used inexplicably in this movie. Despite the potential of its subject matter, there are few genuine or honest moments in I Am Sam. Soon, the local child protection services agency - which apparently had no concerns about Lucy's well-being while she was a baby - starts twirling its moustache and snatches Lucy from the arms of her loving father, who must solicit the aid of a high-strung, Type A attorney (Pfeiffer, at her worst) to bring his daughter home. As Lucy gets older, however, and develops the verbal skills and emotional poise of a 20-year old (as Lucy, newcomer Fanning creepily resembles JonBenet Ramsey, but without the make-up), she becomes more and more conflicted in her feelings for her dad, whom she loves but finds to be a social embarrassment. Other than that obstacle, the difficulties of taking care of a toddler, regardless of the parent's mental capacities, are glossed over, leaving you to surmise that Sam is the embodiment of Dr. The credibility factor plummets from the start, in the early scenes depicting Sam single-handedly raising an infant with the help of a shut-in neighbor, who explains baby Lucy's feeding schedule to the befuddled father by using Nick at Nite programming to mark mealtime hours. Kramer, a film that I Am Sam intentionally plagiarizes on more than one occasion. To win this battle, he must prove himself to be a fit single parent, just like Dustin Hoffman in Kramer vs. Well-intentioned and manipulative in a Lifetime channel kind of way, I Am Sam recounts the story of a mentally retarded man's legal fight against the system to retain custody of his 7-year-old daughter, who is intellectually his equal.
#Watch i am sam 2001 movie
The movie is an unmitigated disaster any way you look at it. Viewing I Am Sam is an experience of successive facial expressions: First there are embarrassed winces, followed by uncomfortable cringes, and ending with an open mouth frozen in disbelief.