Rain Man

#54 in my ranking of Best Picture winners at the Oscars.

Well, this might be the safest Best Picture winner in a while. A perfectly fine, entertaining drama from Barry Levinson, directed from a script by Barry Morrow and Ronald Bass, Rain Man brings together one generation older with the newer generation of acting stars in an unlikely combination on a road trip across America where the flawed character learns the value of other people and becomes a better person. It’s almost rote in how it approaches the material, helped in no small part by the actors themselves selling it as best as they can.

Charlie Babbitt (Tom Cruise) is a young car importer dealing with regulatory problems from the import of four Italian sportscars for his clients when he receives word that his estranged father has died. Leaving the business issues aside, presuming them to be largely solved, he and his girlfriend Susanna (Valeria Golino) head across the country from Los Angeles to Cincinnati to attend the funeral and hear the reading of the will. The will leaves him with a class car and nothing else, the rest being held in a mysterious trust that was set up for his unknown older brother Raymond (Dustin Hoffman). Raymond is so consumed with his autism he’s been kept voluntarily at Wallbrook headed by Dr. Bruner (Jerry Molen).

Enraged at his poor treatment from his father who left three million dollars to a brother he never knew he had, Charlie effectively kidnaps Raymond with the purpose of keeping him in Los Angeles until Dr. Bruner agrees to give Charlie half of the money willed to Raymond. So begins the road trip, necessarily a road trip because Raymond refuses to get on an airplane. What drives Charlie is his initial feelings of disillusionment with his father’s choices, but he’s also forced to learn to deal with Raymond’s wide array of routines he requires to feel comfortable from pancakes for breakfast to watching The People’s Court in the afternoon. The experience is made all the more potent when Susanna abandons Charlie and his mad dash for money by going home ahead of him, leaving the two brothers to discover each other on their own.

This is really fairly standard “make a crappy guy better” sort of Hollywood stuff, and it’s really carried by its two leads. Hoffman received all the plaudits for his realistic portrayal of an extreme autist’s condition, and he does that well. However, it’s Cruise who shows his range with Charlie’s path from self-centered to understanding and open. It’s not the greatest performance in the world, but it’s the kind of movie star delivery that Hollywood had been delivering since Gable or Wayne. He has a base acting talent that combine with his natural charm that made him a star, leading the biggest movie of 1988.

And, I don’t have a whole lot more to say about it. It’s pretty paint-by-numbers, but it’s just well done paint-by-numbers. Butt of a man earns a heart of gold by learning the shared humanity with someone less fortunate than himself. The individual moments carry it, providing the flavor necessary to make it more distinct from generic, like Raymond’s counting of toothpicks or his counting cards in Vegas to provide Charlie with the capital he needs to cover his losses.

It ends up feeling like the safe choice for Best Picture, a crowd pleaser with little challenge and an easy message to digest, well-made by Levinson while delivering the nice moments along the way. I will say, though, that I felt little at the late revelation about who the Rain Man was. Firstly, it was pretty predictable. Secondly, it felt overdone, especially considering the predictability.

Anyway, it’s fine. It’s pretty good. I can see why it was so big and why it won Best Picture.

Rating: 3/4