Love Is All You Need?

"I'm Sam" is a very touching and thought-provoking film. It puts together several important elements of making a successful film, including the difficulty that the physically chllanged or the mentally challenged face in reality, and the love between father and daughter.

Sam, starring Sean Pan, is mentally retarded and has an mental capacity of around a 7 year-old child. Sam's daughter, Lucy, is played by one of the promising child star called Dakota Fanning. Ever since Lucy is born and her mother walks out on them, Sam has to learn how to take care of a baby on his own. For a person who can't even take care of himself very well, it surely is no picnic. Fortunately, Sam has a bunch of loyal friends who are there for him although most of them are not smart, either. But they do give as much love as possible to Lucy and make her grow up like every other girl. However, as Lucy reaches age 7, Sam's limitations start to become a problem at school. Lucy even refueses to study harder and avoids looking smarter than Sam. Sam knows nothing about this. In the celebration of Lucy's 7 th birthday, Sam accidentally hurts Lucy's friend. What brings Sam down is that Lucy's friend tells Sam that Lucy feels a bit ashamed of admiting him as her biological father in the face of her classmates. That's when clouds are hanging over the happy family. The child social welfare organization steps in and starts to evaluate if Sam is capable of a father of Lucy. At this time, a tough and heart-colded lawyer called Rita, starring Michelle Pfeiffer, with problems dealing with the relatioships between herself, her husband and son, appears on the stage and is willing to take Sam's case pro bono and fight the custody of Lucy. In the process of the custody battle, Sam warms Rita's heart and teaches her the real meaning of love.

A lot of my friends were blown away by the vivid portrayal of Sean Pan as a mentally retarded father and were deeply touched by the close father-daughter relationship. With a father like this, some kids might feel shy or ashamed. However, compared to Rita, Sam does all he can and uses his own way to love Lucy as a father, whereas Rita is gorgeous, glamorous and successful at work, but fails in family relationship management. There is nothing worng with what Lucy does to Sam. After all, afterwards she realizes it's wrong and tries to put it right. However, this film does raise an important issue. If a child is raised by parents like Sam, how much should the government step in and help the family? In the movie, there are a lot of alternatives and solutions put forth in court. For example, Sam can apply for some free tutorial services for Lucy's studies. Or as the other lawyer says, Lucy should have a foster family so that she can grow up in a "NORMAL" family and secure a better future. Without love, Lucy can't be a happy camper and that might turn her into someone else without a bright future at all. So, should we deprive her of her rights of being loved by her father and turn her world upside down? On the other hand, without good education and proper guidance, she might lose competiveness and get lost when she takes on the world. So, should Sam keep her with him and run the risks that her future might be sabotaged? It's quite a delimma. So, if you were the judge of the case, what would you do? I believe after watching this movie, more ideas will cross your mind. Just feel free to share it with me here.

On a personal note, one of my friends was raised by his grandparents. He never lived with his parents at all. That's why he and his parents kind of drifted apart. Another reason for that is that his parents are mute and my friend only knows one thing or two about sign laugage. So, it's very difficult for him to communicate with his parents. In the society, mute people are the minorities. It's even tougher for them to find good jobs nowadays because of the economic slowdown. One day, they came back and asked my friend to lend some money to them for emergencies because they had lost their jobs for a few months. Although the relationship between them is not that tight, without second thought, he lent some money to them. However, one week later, they came back for money again. This time, my friend was caught in delimma. For him, love-wise, his parents are like nothing but strangers although it's hard to cut the cord in reality. He doesn't think he has the obligation to help them out. However, his conscience tells him he has to reach out his hand because they are the minorities in the society because he has a big heart and he donates money to charitable organzations from time to time. For him, even if his parents are more like strangers, at that time he still thought at least he could treat them as those who are in need in the society. Therefore, he helped them again. But what if they comes back again in the near future? He also has no idea what he will do once that happens. When he told me the story, I didn't know what to tell him. If you were my friend, what would you do?

For this movie trailer, please go to the following website.
http://video.aol.com/video-detail/i-am-sam-trailer/2051160029