I Am Sam is the story of Sam Dawson (Penn), a Beatles-obsessed Starbucks employee with roughly the same mental capacity as his seven-year-old daughter, Lucy Diamond (played by the moderately cute Dakota Fanning), who is named after the song. Sam raises Lucy on his own after his wife abandons him, but runs into trouble with the authorities when Lucy deliberately refuses to learn to read in order to avoid looking more intelligent than him. Enter the Ice Queen lawyer Rita Harrison (Pfeiffer) whom Sam shames into working pro bono for him, and you have a fairly good film.
The underlying message in I Am Sam is 'all you need is love' ...to raise a child. Of course, this premise is contagious and eventually rubs off on Rita (who admits that her life isn't as sweet as she initially made it out to be). This entails that some parts of the film will be slightly schmaltzy, and unfortunately in some parts it's a bit overdone. The acting in the movie is commendable, although Sean Penn sometimes suffers from trying too hard to be Rain Man. Despite a few clich((eacute))s and some genuinely annoying moments (like the blatant Starbucks advertising), it is an ultimately entertaining film. Well worth a look.