An Analysis on I Am Sam

Introduction to Special Education 203

Sara McGuire

Movie Critique

Wednesday, September 15, 2021

 I Am Sam tells a story about a father with the mental capacity of a 7-year-old and autistic

tendencies. Sam has a baby with a woman who leaves him behind with nothing but her daughter,

Lucy, and a note that explains she just needed a place to stay and didn’t want a child with Sam.

He spends the first 6 years of Lucy’s life raising her by himself in his tiny apartment with the

help of his neighbor but when she starts school, she starts becoming smarter than her father, and

the school notices. A social worker gets involved and decides Sam isn’t fit to raise a child

because of his mental capacity, and during Lucy’s 7th birthday party she’s taken away from her

father and is put in a foster home. Desperate for help, Sam and his friends who are also people

with disabilities find an ad for a lawyer and Sam pursues it without knowing that she’s very

pricey. Luckily for Sam, after some criticism that Lawyer Rita receives, she takes his case,

pro-bono, meaning 100% free. During the case, Sam works hard to be able to get Lucy back

including working multiple jobs to afford a better apartment, training by Rita to take the stand,

and the constant change of his schedule. However, once Sam finally takes the stand he breaks

down and tells the court that he doesn’t think he is fit to be a father after the prosecutor

convinces him that he isn’t. Lucy is then put into a foster family who wants to adopt her, but

decides to instead tell the court that Sam gives Lucy more love than she ever could after she sees

Sam’s visits and Lucy sneak out of her house multiple times to go see Sam during the night. Sam

tells Lucy’s foster mother that he can’t raise her alone, so the movie ends by insinuating that they

help raise her together.

Sam’s specific disability wasn’t described but he was often characterized as having the

mental capacity of a 7-year-old, and it is also mentioned once by the therapist he had to visit that

he has autistic tendencies. Two examples where this is shown is when he can’t read a word in

one of Lucy’s books that her teacher gave out and Sam agreeing to go to Bob’s Big Boy instead
of IHOP because Lucy wants to try a burger there, but has a meltdown when they can’t make his

food as IHOP does. Sam’s disability has a huge impact on his world, in both good and bad ways.

Probably the most important impact it has in this movie is the loss of full custody of his child.

Due to this happening, a lot more people get involved in Sam and Lucy’s life and thus are also

impacted by Sam. Lucy’s life is impacted in an interesting way. While kids end up making fun of

her father, Sam is also the only dad who plays on the playground with his child. Additionally,

because Sam wasn’t able to take Lucy to work, his neighbor Annie would often babysit so in a

way even Annie was impacted by Sam’s disability. Another example of someone impacted is

Rita. At first, Rita saw his disability as a burden because she saw him as hard to handle, but

when she got closer to Sam she saw him as more of a friend than a client, and even went to

Lucy’s soccer games and opened up to him about her marriage. All in all, because Sam’s

disability isn’t visual but is present as soon as someone meets him, I would say that the impact of

his disability can be on someone as little as an acquaintance, whether that’s the waiter at Bob’s

Big Boy or his co-workers at Starbucks or his own daughter.

As a result of how impactful Sam’s disability can be, it’s really important for society to

try to adapt to people with disabilities or handicaps. This is not only so that these people can be

more accepted in typical situations such as getting a job or a promotion, going to college, or even

small things that we take advantage of like moving out or being able to go shopping by ourselves

but it’s especially to give these people who are impacting people in these scenarios comfort and

normalcy. Despite there being 7.9 billion people on Earth, nobody is the same but the way

society is set up now is as if we all were. I believe something as simple as normalizing some of

the behavior that is displayed by people with disabilities can help to erase some of the prejudice

towards disabilities. Although it might seem like it is his peers who are the most frustrated with
Sam’s disability, it is probably he who is the most frustrated, especially towards the end of the

movie. I believe this to be true because after all his hard work fails, he decides to seclude himself

because he believes it’s just him who is the problem.

To conclude, I thought that this was a very touching story about Sam and his journey to

get his daughter back. Even though I was watching this movie for an assignment, I got so into it

that I would watch it again willingly. It made me cry a lot and that just goes to show how

impactful a movie like this can be. I always personally think that I am very welcoming, and this

movie is going to make me continue to be that warm welcoming person to everybody regardless

of who they are. I also thought it was very sweet without the Seemingly cold-hearted lawyer

ended up warming up to Samand even becoming friends. This just goes to show that you should

never judge a book by its cover.

References:

Nelson, Jessie. I Am Sam. New Line Cinema, 2001.