>>88686758 As a character Rita does for high-powered career women what Sam does for the mentally disabled, which is to say nothing new. In her first five minutes of screen time Rita, played with brittle efficiency by Michelle Pfeiffer, hangs up on her son, blows off her therapist, reduces her assistant to tears and for good measure kicks over a bowl of jelly beans. She is a ball of furious ambition and, needless to say, frustrated maternal instincts, speeding through the city in her Porsche and barking into her cellphone while her marriage founders and her child's resentment grows.
But guess what? In discovering Sam's humanity, Rita gets in touch with her own. ''I think I've gotten more out of this relationship than you have,'' she tells her client later on. But of course. The function of the disabled in Hollywood tear-jerkers (and also, often, of blacks, the elderly, and occasionally the poor of the third world) is to make the rest of us feel better about ourselves. ''I Am Sam'' feels sufficiently good about itself, certain enough of its sympathy for its title character, to allow itself to make fun of him and his friends. They dress funny. They say silly, charming things. They are lovable, clumsy and odd.
