Skepticism is a wise approach toward a film whose central message is that society need not concern itself with the safety or well being of children raised by severely disabled adults.
Sam is a single father whose mental age is supposed to be less than an eight-year-old child, yet he holds a full time job that pays for a two bedroom apartment which he keeps cleaner and better decorated than the average suburban home.
In other words, despite a suite of tics and speech impediments performed by the talented Sean Penn, the Hollywood treatment transforms a person who would not be able to support himself in the real world into a middle class parent. The neighbor is even a Juilliard graduate who gives free piano lessons.
The lack of realism here is stunning: does a job sweeping floors at Starbucks really pay for a decent apartment in any major city? Of course it doesn't. People with the mental age of grade school children don't make competent housekeepers either: they end up with dwellings full of vermin, they stack newspapers next to oily rags because they don't know any better, they mix the wrong household chemicals with toxic results. In the real world a child whose parent has a mental disability is more likely to get singled out by pedophiles or schoolyard buddies than by a kindly agoraphobic pianist. Reality can be ugly; this is why child protection agencies exist.
The plot of this fiction then challenges whether such a person should keep custody of his child. With the dice weighted like this, how much of a mystery could the outcome be?
In one scene in particular Michelle Pfeiffer, who plays Sam's lawyer in his defense against Child Protective Services, loses her temper for a moment at her own children and then wonders whether she is so different from Sam? Yes of course she is different because a normal parent is capable of learning from his or her mistakes but a mentally impaired parent lacks that learning curve.
There is no doubting the skill of the cast in their profession and Dakota Fanning is a darling. The writing goes as far as it can toward making this premise plausible, which in a different sort of film could be harmless. We all know, for example, that zombies can't really exist. Yet it can be thrilling for two hours to pretend that they do. This film is far more toxic because it attempts to depict a real world problem, and then it encourages all the rationalizations that leave helpless children in unsafe situations. The film's emotional arc shifts to how much Sam wants to be a parent--rather than whether he is competent at it. That is exactly where the focus in child safety cases should never be.
Sam is a single father whose mental age is supposed to be less than an eight-year-old child, yet he holds a full time job that pays for a two bedroom apartment which he keeps cleaner and better decorated than the average suburban home.
In other words, despite a suite of tics and speech impediments performed by the talented Sean Penn, the Hollywood treatment transforms a person who would not be able to support himself in the real world into a middle class parent. The neighbor is even a Juilliard graduate who gives free piano lessons.
The lack of realism here is stunning: does a job sweeping floors at Starbucks really pay for a decent apartment in any major city? Of course it doesn't. People with the mental age of grade school children don't make competent housekeepers either: they end up with dwellings full of vermin, they stack newspapers next to oily rags because they don't know any better, they mix the wrong household chemicals with toxic results. In the real world a child whose parent has a mental disability is more likely to get singled out by pedophiles or schoolyard buddies than by a kindly agoraphobic pianist. Reality can be ugly; this is why child protection agencies exist.
The plot of this fiction then challenges whether such a person should keep custody of his child. With the dice weighted like this, how much of a mystery could the outcome be?
In one scene in particular Michelle Pfeiffer, who plays Sam's lawyer in his defense against Child Protective Services, loses her temper for a moment at her own children and then wonders whether she is so different from Sam? Yes of course she is different because a normal parent is capable of learning from his or her mistakes but a mentally impaired parent lacks that learning curve.
There is no doubting the skill of the cast in their profession and Dakota Fanning is a darling. The writing goes as far as it can toward making this premise plausible, which in a different sort of film could be harmless. We all know, for example, that zombies can't really exist. Yet it can be thrilling for two hours to pretend that they do. This film is far more toxic because it attempts to depict a real world problem, and then it encourages all the rationalizations that leave helpless children in unsafe situations. The film's emotional arc shifts to how much Sam wants to be a parent--rather than whether he is competent at it. That is exactly where the focus in child safety cases should never be.