Critical Reception
The film received mixed reviews from critics. I Am Sam holds a rating of 34% on Rotten Tomatoes, and a score of 28 on Metacritic.
The New York Times wrote that "I Am Sam is a good movie, and its intentions are unimpeachable. But its sentimentality is so relentless and its narrative so predictable that the life is very nearly squeezed out of it." Variety wrote: "Undone by its best intentions, I Am Sam is an especially insipid example of the Hollywood message movie." The Chicago Sun-Times wrote that "every device of the movie's art is designed to convince us Lucy must stay with Sam, but common sense makes it impossible to go the distance with the premise." Roger Ebert also criticized the morality tale character of the movie, saying that "you can't have heroes and villains when the wrong side is making the best sense."
On the other hand, the Los Angeles Times reviewed it positively as a "most inviting and accessible film that turns upon a mental condition that most people would prefer not to think about." The San Francisco Chronicle commended Sean Penn for his performance: "Penn's accuracy, his lack of condescension or sentiment, and his willingness to inhabit his character without any implicit commentary take what might have been the equivalent of an inflated TV movie and elevate it to the level of art." The New Yorker, however, found Michelle Pfeiffer to be the standout: "Pfeiffer, enormously likable in the role, almost saves the movie."
Nick Rogers condemned the film: "Sean Penn gives the most professionally shameful, cruelly wrongheaded performance ever nominated for a Best Actor Oscar, while Jessie Nelson Kristine Johnson's script lives down to Penn's ugly ineptitude with idiotic catchphrases and product placement." Ron Wells added: "This movie is every bit as painful as it sounds."
Ben Stiller has said that Sean Penn's performance, along with other actors' performances such as Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump and Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, is the source of the movie Tropic Thunder's infamous admonition: "Never go full retard". Patton Oswalt has stated that I Am Sam is the specific example of an actor playing a developmentally disabled person too accurately to actually be awarded an Oscar.
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