Product Details

• Actors: Sean Penn, Michelle Pfeiffer, Dakota Fanning, Dianne Wiest, Loretta Devine
• Directors: Jessie Nelson
• Writers: Jessie Nelson, Kristine Johnson
• Producers: Jessie Nelson, Barbara A. Hall, Claire Rudnick Polstein, David Rubin, Edward Zwick
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
• Rated: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: New Line Home Video
• VHS Release Date: January 14, 2003
• Run Time: 132 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (268 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000066HAT
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #198,515 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

I Am Sam makes you laugh, cry, and recoil all at the same time. Perhaps no other film of recent memory has epitomized the shameless sentimentality of Hollywood as succinctly as director and screenwriter Jessie Nelson's story of a mentally challenged man fighting to retain custody of his 7-year-old daughter. Sam (Sean Penn), who has the mental age of 7, wipes down tables at a Los Angeles Starbucks and takes good care of his daughter Lucy (Dakota Fanning), who was left with him shortly after birth by a homeless woman. Sam has gotten by just fine with a little help from his friends, including his eccentric neighbor (Dianne Wiest) and a lovable group of similarly challenged friends, but a series of misunderstandings leaves Sam fighting to get Lucy back from the state. Sam's lawyer, Rita Harrison (Michelle Pfeiffer), is an overly ambitious woman whose life is soon transformed by proximity to Sam's brimming humanity. Sean Penn is, as usual, wholeheartedly committed to his role and turns in an admirable, if overtly affected performance. However, I Am Sam, with all its earnest charm, reaches an emblematic low when Sam, a character apparently devoid of any authentic sentiment, delivers a courtroom speech memorized from Kramer vs. Kramer as the film's finale. --Fionn Meade

From The New Yorker

An awkwardly sincere attempt to come to terms with an impossible subject. Sam (Sean Penn), a retarded Santa Monica man, has a brilliant daughter (Dakota Fanning) who reaches the age of seven and begins to surpass him; the authorities want to separate them, but father and daughter don't want to be separated. Penn, openmouthed, starting and stammering, plunges deep into Sam's confusions and his innate good-heartedness. The trouble is, Penn doesn't know when to stop: he does every poetic movement or despairing emotion again and again. The writer-director Jessie Nelson also suffers from a surfeit of goodness. In portraying the entire way of life of Sam and his "challenged" friends, she overtaxes the audience's kindest impulses. Michelle Pfeiffer shows up as Sam's high-strung lawyer-a beautiful striver, brilliant and accomplished, but an unhappy wreck. Pfeiffer is so likable in the role that she almost saves the movie. Almost. -David Denby
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

100 of 111 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Rare Movie Experience, January 20, 2002

By 

Nancy R. Katz "NancyK18" (NJ) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

From the first moment I AM SAM began, I realized I was in for a rare movie treat. As part of a movie class I was fortunate to recently preview I AM SAM and find now, several weeks later that I am still as enthusiastic about this film as I was when I first saw it.

Sean Penn, and I cannot say enough about his performance, plays Sam, a mentally challenged adult with the mental capacity of a 7 year old. We first see him working at Starbucks while he puts out sugar packets in an obsessive manner, calling out orders over and over and endearing himself to customers in his charming Sam manner. Suddenly, Sam is called away and we watch him enter a hospital and witness the birth of his daughter. Elated and awestruck, Sam names the baby girl Lucy, after the Beatle song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. Unfortunately Lucy's mother isn't intersted in either Sam or Lucy and as they leave the hospital, with Lucy in Sam's arms, simply runs away from them. Ill prepared and ill equipped to raise a child, Sam somehow managaes to bring up Lucy with the help of a kindly and eccentric neighbor played to perfection by Dianne Weist. As the years go by, we see glimpses of Lucy growing up as she plays with Sam, as they read Green Eggs and Ham together before bedtime, as Sam buys shoes with Lucy aided by his friends who are also mentally challenged and finally when Lucy begins school. And while I know realistically that Sam being capable of raising Lucy mostly on his own till she reaches grade school might be unlikely, Sean Penn as Sam is so loving and good with Lucy, that I truly wanted to believe this could happen.

While it isn't firmly established how Sam and Lucy manage to evade child welfare agencies all of this time, eventually these beauracratic agencies do become aware of Lucy's situation and challenge Sam's ability to care for her. Sam now must fight for Lucy as he never has had to do before. Confused and heartbroken, Sam initially finds a high powered lawyer played by Michelle Pfeiffer. But she wants no part of the case. Beset by a career which takes over her life, Michelle Pfeiffer's character has a sullen young son at home and little to say to her husband. Eventually, though, she does take the case, is almost shamed into it by other lawyers in her firm. But in a remarkable twist of fate and and while helping Sam, she learns a great deal from him about parenting and unconditional love. What happens to Sam and Lucy as they are separated and the case is argued in court are memorable scenes filled with tremendous poignancy and deep emotions. For after all, who is truly fit to be a parent. Is love enough? Who does make a good parent? And most of all, what is in the best interest of Sam's daughter, Lucy

As an addition and complementing the tremendous perfomances of Sean Penn, Michelle Pfeiffer,Dianne Weist and Laura Dern Lucy played by Dakota Fanning, the movie inclues as background music many of the songs of the Beatles. And at various times the screenplay includes relevant lines and quotes which are fitting to the scenes. It was particualrly eerie watching this movie a few days after the death of George Harrison to hear Sam talk about the success of Harrison's song, "Here Comes the Sun," from the Abbey Road album. But what an appropriate comment I thought as the sun shined down on both Lucy and Sam as Sam ran around the soccer field with Lucy in his arms.

I cannot praise this movie enough. While at times one couldn't help but think of the movies Rainman and Kramer vs. Kramer, I AM SAM stands on its own as being a truly wonderful movie. I fully expect that Sean Penn will be nominated for many awards for his magnificent performance. I certainly hope he is acknowledged for this, a performance of a lifetime. If not I am confident that viewers like myself will never forget Sean Penn as Sam or this finely drawn character.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars . . . My brother has autism . . ., May 31, 2004

By 

Infinite Catalyst "C. Robert Dennis" (Monument, CO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: I am Sam (New Line Platinum Series) (DVD)

This film is phenomenal. Let me tell you why, in the best way I know how:

**Personal Preface: My brother Christopher has autism. He was diagnosed with autism when he was four, and is now twenty-four. In age, he is my older brother; in mentality I have been his older brother since I was 5.
Growing up with Christopher has taught me many things about life-perspective and how some people see many things differently. I am deeply saddened by the other reviews here slandering the film on the grounds that "it takes much more than love to get a girl through adolescence, and anything else in life."
The Greeks labeled three kinds of love, Eros: passionate or sensual love, Phileao: love shared between close friends and family, and Agape: A transcendent, selfless love that neither wavers nor grows dim. Unfortunately some people have never experienced all three of these types of love, nor do they know how to measure their efficacy.
To my brother Christopher, all he does need is love, and literally as a high functioning person with autism, all he gives is love. It's all he knows. He loves life, cheeseburgers, music, church: simple things.
As a certified assistant psychotherapist for the Lovaas firm of autism research, I also know that love, even as the popular definition as our culture knows it, is the most effective tool in helping both children and those with autism develop as functional human beings.
My mother works with the career resource exchange in Colorado Springs. In her case load has more than 30 different people with mental disabilities that she helps on a bi-weekly basis. Even having an autistic child, she did not recognize Sean Penn until the movie was over. Here's the kicker, Sean Penn is her favorite actor. That is what kind of performance he gives.
To both Roger Ebert, and the individual that quoted him: Ebert, everyone knew you as the bitter weird tub next to Siskel, grow up, and figure out that nobody like your pious pretension and aesthetic retardation. In response to the pessimistic young man who quoted R.E. Mystery Log: befriend someone with downs, or Aspurgers, and figure out how their minds work, how their hearts talk, and then critique movies that you know nothing about.

***Movie Review: Honestly Sean Penn's performance eclipses Dustin Hoffman's in Rain man, both for believability and accuracy. You know how the Academy Awards operate; he was being rewarded for this performance this year. Sean Penn's performance is nothing short of a cinematic miracle of epic proportions. His behaviorisms, tics, antics, voice inflection, deliveries, the list just goes on and on.
Two of the four actors that played his friends actually had the disabilities they were portraying, making authenticity something not to be questioned.
The film raises a series on controversial questions about guardianship and family; the most controversial here being how certain demanding vocations can corrode your life, and your relationship with your family. Michelle Pfeifer does an incredible job portraying the overworked mother, whose stresses at a six figure job causes dilapidations in her home life as well as work relations.
The other amount of controversy can be attributed to the antagonizing of the state's District Attorney. In most cases the state does do its job of properly assessing the abilities of caretakers of those mentally disabled, but there have been many cases where the state was incapable of demonstrating these abilities. By no means does this movie mean to prove that this is unequivocally the lot of the courthouse, but it does illuminate infractions that are not unheard of in the courtroom.

This film has made me cry every time I see it. I have seen it about eight times. I don't cry because I am sad, or because I am over emotional, or because I am happy that small voices are being heard, I cry because I see the characters going through the same struggles I go through in my life, and overcome them with love and things we often forget. This film is in my top 25 incredible movies list. Five stars, highest recommendations.

39 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing..., December 8, 2001

By 

L. Patino "cheeto999" (California, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

I was shown the film I am Sam in a class that i just finished down in LA. First off, the soundtrack is a definite must buy, as many recording artists cover beatles songs in a very tasteful manner. The film itself delivers high calibur performances from all of the leads and the supporting cast. I would be very surprised if sean penn doesn't get an acadamy award nomination. Michelle pfieffer was also very good in the film, as was laura dern. This movie went straight for the heart and it was able to balance the serious moments with some light hearted moments. The young actress who played lucy was amazing in the film as well. I recommend this to anyone who wants to see a movie that will make you think. Think about what it means to be a good parent, and about the strength and spirit of love and how it transcends any handicap that we are born with or that we inflict upon ourselves. I can't say enough great things about this movie, so go see it!