Mellow dramas: two recent releases suggest that Hollywood just might think it's cool to be corny

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Feb 25, 2002 | by Rex Roberts

If Hollywood is condemned for its reliance on sex and violence, it follows that filmmakers should be applauded for producing uplifting entertainment -- whether or not these movies are successful, financially or artistically. Two current films, I Am Sam and A Rumor of Angels, have everything conservative critics cry for -- family values, moral certitude, admirable characters -- but they also are saccharine, sappy melodramas as excessively sentimental as most movies are gratuitously vulgar.

I Am Sam chronicles the travails of Sam Dawson (Sean Penn), a retarded adult who by virtue of a misguided liaison has fathered a child, Lucy (Dakota Fanning), now a beautiful, intelligent, sensitive, caring and astonishingly mature elementary student. Despite his noble efforts at parenting, and the help of well-meaning friends (also mentally handicapped), Sam finds himself battling the state for custody of his daughter. He forges an unlikely alliance with glamorous high-octane attorney Rita Harrison (Michelle Pfeiffer), who by virtue of a misguided gesture accepts his case pro bono. The film unfolds predictably, with Sam and Rita finding common ground (she, too, is struggling to hold onto her son as her marriage collapses and her career spontaneously combusts) and with Lucy committing precocious acts of bravery and compassion in the face of an uncaring bureaucracy and a callous legal system.

A Rumor of Angels has a more subtle, if saccharine, storyline. Beautiful, intelligent, sensitive James (Trevor Morgan), astoundingly grown-up for a 12-year-old, nevertheless is unable to come to terms with the death of his mother. His anger and grief are exacerbated by his absent father (Ray Liotta), away from their quaint seaside village earning big bucks, and his cowed stepmom (Catherine McCormack), too fearful of rejection to control the boy. By virtue of a misguided prank, James is thrown together with the town's eccentric widower, Maddy (Vanessa Redgrave), who takes him under her ruffled wing. The film does not unfold predictably -- Maddy employs unorthodox methods to teach James about faith and hope -- although Angels includes cliches such as joyful dancing to Mozart (while whitewashing a fence), an emotionally charged father-and-son reunion (on a sun-drenched beach) and a tearful "I-was-afraid-I'd-never-get-to-say-I-love-you" swan scene between now-best-friends James and Maddy.

Lachrymose stuff, no doubt about it, but I Am Sam and Angels have their redeeming qualities. Penn's performance is superb, for one thing, although his fine acting is sabotaged by Jessie Nelson's idiotic direction. Nelson not only employs a jiggly hand-held camera and quick cuts to the point of distraction, she also makes Penn reprise bits that are clever the first time, cloying the second, irritating the third. Likewise, Redgrave manages to be ingratiatingly cranky and charming in her role as craggy faith healer, even if director Peter O'Fallon makes his actors romp like pixies.

Both films certainly fall under the category of inspirational -- I Am Sam will be preferred by New Democrats who embrace welfare reform but still believe it takes a village; Angels by old-fangled Republicans who believe in God and family. Indeed, at one point, Maddy slaps James' face for talking sassy, a gesture that would be welcome in the next Adam Sandler flick.

Get-out-your-handkerchief movies aren't for everybody, and these two will do better in video than in theaters. But hooray for Hollywood for making pictures that are practically sermons in celluloid. Heck, maybe Ron Howard is ready to make Mayberry: The Movie.

REX ROBERTS IS THE NEW YORK CORRESPONDENT FOR Insight.