You know the year is winding down when Hollywood's biggest stars are reduced to quivering, tormented lumps of flesh.  It's impossible to throw a stone without hitting some film that fancies itself an Oscar contender and features an A-lister (or two) pulling out all the stops in what may as well have the words "For Your Consideration" flashing at the bottom of the screen.  Quills, Pollock, Requiem For a Dream and Before Night Falls were some of the films that fit this mold last year, and I Am Sam is definitely a contestant in 2001.

Sam stars Sean Penn (Up at the Villa) as a mentally challenged adult who loses custody of his seven-year-old daughter because of his illness.  Now, in real life, I'd be all for a retarded guy losing custody of his daughter, but Sam is so well-made, I was almost audibly rooting for the guy to get his kid back.  And if that's not a sign of a good film, I don't know what is.

The film opens with a close-up of Sam's (Penn) hands carefully rearranging the straws and condiments at the Santa Monica Starbucks that employs him. He's on a first-name basis with most of the customers and congratulates them each on their drink selections, saying "That's a wonderful choice" to pretty much everyone within earshot (the line is kind of like Sam's version of Rain Man's "Wapner's on in ten minutes").  You'd never peg the guy as a father-to-be, but that's what he is, and we see him racing from the coffee shop to the hospital, where a woman who doesn't seem to want much to do with him squeezes out a baby.

Though it is never explicitly explained, it is inferred the mother was homeless and Sam took her in and, somehow, knocked her up.  Once she's recovered from the birthing, the woman takes off, leaving Sam with the newborn baby, who he names Lucy (as in "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds," because he's a big Beatles fan).  For some reason, there isn't a social worker to step in, and Sam takes Lucy home to his apartment decked out in John Lennon posters.  The baby's constant shrieking bothers his agoraphobic neighbor (Dianne Wiest, Practical Magic) so badly, she comes over and works out a feeding schedule that coincides with Nickelodeon's programming.

Flash to seven years later, where Lucy has become an amazing, beautiful, intelligent little girl who happens to be smarter than her dad.  Lucy loves having a child-like father (who wouldn't?), at least until she starts school and finds out how messed up her situation really is.  Before long, Sam is getting fucked over by the cops and social workers, who take Lucy away from him and throw her in a foster home.  He needs an attorney to help him in the custody case and, quite randomly, picks Rita (Michelle Pfeiffer, What Lies Beneath), a self-centered spoiled brat who can't seem to do anything for herself.  At first, she wants nothing to do with the flailing-armed nutter, but her colleagues guilt her into taking the case pro bono.

The actual custody battle isn't anything we haven't seen before, as is the relationship between Sam and Rita (it's the Rain Man thing – he's ten times more together and well-mannered than she is).  But there are enough special things in Sam to make it worth your while.  For starters, Penn is amazing. He's thicker around the middle, and, at times, you forget you're watching him.  He even does a couple of great physical scenes that had me in stitches.  Dakota Fanning, who plays the seven-year-old version of Lucy, can act circles around any of those dopey kids from Harry Potter, and Pfeiffer could give a lesson or two in script selection to the rapidly aging Meg Ryan.

Penn and writer/director/producer Jessie Nelson (Corrina, Corrina, which featured another great child performance) spent some time in a center for people with disabilities, and their homework sure paid off.  Nelson's direction is easily one of the best of this year.  Shooting mostly with a handheld camera and using clever, frantic editing makes Sam look a lot like the late, great television show Homicide (it was photographed by Elliot Davis, who has worked on four Steven Soderbergh films).  There's one incredible scene where Nelson uses an audio montage of the ever-inquisitive Lucy asking Sam dozens of questions that he can't possibly answer.  It's heartbreaking, but extremely effective.

Another positive in the audio department is Sam's amazing soundtrack, which is comprised of big contemporary stars like Eddie Vedder and Aimee Mann covering Beatles hits (the songs coincide with the events of the film extremely well).  It's a nice (albeit accidental) posthumous tribute to George Harrison.

2:10 –

for language