I Am Sam

Sam, a neurodivergent man, has a daughter with a homeless woman who abandons them when they leave the hospital, leaving Sam to raise Lucy on his own. But as Lucy grows up, Sam's limitations as a parent start to become a problem and the authorities take her away. Sam convinces high-priced lawyer Rita to take his case pro bono and in turn teaches her the value of love and family.

Critics were largely hostile to I Am Sam, finding it a textbook case of Hollywood sentimentality overwhelming a genuinely complex subject — a story about a father with an intellectual disability fighting for custody of his daughter that critics felt the film reduced to feel-good simplicity. The one consistent point of praise was Sean Penn's performance, with some arguing it transcended the material, while audiences responded far more warmly than critics did, a gap that remains one of the more striking in recent memory.