| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Not about the justice or injustice of the legal system. Rather it's about the tragedy of Sam's predicament.
|
| 75 |
New York Post
Penn makes us take the leap required by Kristine Johnson and Jessie Nelson's screenplay -- you end up deeply caring about Sam and Lucy.
|
| 70 |
Los Angeles Times
A warm, hard-to-resist story.
|
| 70 |
TV Guide
Penn's stark and unvarnished portrait of the challenged Sam makes even the hardest-to-swallow plot acceptable.
|
| 63 |
Boston Globe
Ham-handedly manipulative film.
|
| 63 |
Chicago Tribune
The role sounds like a sentimental trap, but Penn doesn't fall into it. It's a sensational performance, and he illumines a movie that sometimes seems in danger of descending into modish Hollywood political correctness.
|
| 50 |
Charlotte Observer
The cancer of dishonesty begins to grow half an hour into the film, and it riddles the picture by the end.
|
| 50 |
Slate
Just don't believe the anti-hype. There are lots of reasons to have a good cry these days -- here's a nice, warm place to get squeezed.
|
| 50 |
Chicago Sun-Times
The kind of performance Penn delivers in I Am Sam, which may look hard, is easy, compared, say, to his amazing work in Woody Allen's "Sweet and Lowdown."
|
| 42 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
I can imagine the pitch meeting: "It's 'Kramer vs. Kramer' meets 'Forrest Gump.' No, wait, 'Rainman' has a baby!"
|
| 42 |
Entertainment Weekly
The dumbing down of low-IQ sentimentality.
|
| 40 |
The New York Times
Not a bad 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.
|
| 40 |
Time
As the director of this noble weepie, Nelson so overuses visual tricks -- zooms, zip pans and multiple perspectives on a simple scene -- that she turns the viewer into an exasperated parent; this is a directorial style in need of a spanking.
|
| 40 |
LA Weekly
By-the-numbers Oscar bait -- but Penn does manage, against such odds, to make us see Sam as a person, not a performance.
|
| 38 |
Miami Herald
There's only one excuse for the sentimental and ham-handed I Am Sam, and it's not to tout the rights of the mentally disabled.
|
| 38 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
The film's one realistic performance is that of Dakota Fanning as Lucy, whose child's shame, fear and resourcefulness ground the movie in recognizable behavior. She breathes air into this suffocating enterprise.
|
| 33 |
Portland Oregonian
This isn't an ordinary film built on a remarkable performance; it's a poor one with a gem at its core. Penn can elevate it to mediocrity, but he cannot make it fly.
|
| 30 |
New York Magazine
I Am Sam is about as connected to the real world as Dr. Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham, from which its title is derived -- in fact, in the realism department, Seuss may have the edge.
|
| 30 |
Chicago Reader
It’s a heart-tugging scenario undermined by a striking hypocrisy: obscuring a hot-button issue in casting, some actors with Down's syndrome have minor roles, while Penn plays the lead -- and chews the scenery.
|
| 30 |
The New Yorker
Pfeiffer, enormously likable in the role, almost saves the movie. [28 Jan 2002, p. 90]
|
| 30 |
Washington Post
Well-intentioned but ludicrous tale.
|
| 30 |
Rolling Stone
Contrived, manipulative and shamelessly sentimental, this film is notable for the courageous reach of Sean Penn, who gives a bold, heartfelt performance.
|
| 25 |
New York Daily News
It's a difficult issue, one that is not well served by a hollow confection like I Am Sam.
|
| 25 |
Christian Science Monitor
The film means well, but each scene gets clobbered by sappy screenwriting.
|
| 25 |
USA Today
Drawn out and dishonest in equal measure, Sam fights it out with "The Majestic" for the title of worst "important" movie of the year.
|
| 25 |
Baltimore Sun
The film is so busy that every minute is exhausting. It's as if the filmmakers were idealistic teen-agers afflicted with a group case of Attention Deficit Disorder.
|
| 20 |
Washington Post
The movie that Disney uses to explore this premise drips with so much corporate good-neighbor syrup, you might want to wear something waterproof. And Penn's performance is, at best, ripe for discussion.
|
| 20 |
Film Threat
Is this what Sean Penn has come to in his 40s? He hasn't appeared this retarded since he was married to Madonna.
|
| 10 |
Variety
An especially insipid example of the Hollywood message movie.
|
| 10 |
New Times (L.A.)
In one of the year's most woefully manipulative and oppressively pandering offerings: I Am Sam, a dolled-up TV movie-of-the-week masquerading as profound cinema.
|
| 0 |
Austin Chronicle
It's a bad movie that only a parent could love.
|
| 0 |
Village Voice
Actual concussive cranial abuse would be preferable to Jessie Nelson's I Am Sam.
|
| 0 |
Salon.com
Penn's portrayal strikes me as equally insensitive. It's the nightmare performance of 2001.
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