nan | 楠木

For a film that features a low-IQ character with a very simple wish (wanting to take care of his daughter), I am Sam is over-constructed and ultimately too cheesy to feel genuine. However, that doesn’t stop Sean Penn from delivering a home-run performance.

Penn is Sam, the title character who has only the intelligence of a 7-year-old. By some strange event (one night stand?), a woman gives birth to his child and then abandons them both. Sam raises up the little girl (with help from his neighbors and friends), but as Lucy grows older life gets difficult as she begins to understand her father is different.

On her seventh birthday, the party carefully arranged by her father goes wrong, and child care steps in to take Lucy away from Sam. What ensues is a legal battle for Sam’s parental rights, and Sam enlists help from an unlikely lawyer Rita (Michelle Pfeiffer).

The real life and in-court struggle makes up most of the film’s time, and there’s plenty of tear-evoking scenes. Too much, in fact, as after the first few attempts though Penn’s performance is still an awe to watch, the scenes feel too familiar and manipulated. And I feel that’s the central issue of this film – it feels too artificial to evoke my real emotions.

6/10