I fall hook, line and sinker for unabashed dramas, and the sleeper film Awakenings from 1990 always gets me right here (*gestures to chest*). Go ahead, roll your eyes if you want. It's certainly either a love it or hate it movie -- and I'll tell you right now, I love it.
When it was made, director Penny Marshall was still striving to shake her Laverne De Fazio image from television. Her father Garry had already begun working on the "unique comedies with a serious side" he became renowned for. For her first directorial outing, Penny had the pre-requisite clunker Jumpin' Jack Flash, but struck gold with the sophomore breakout comedy Big, starring Tom Hanks. Awakenings was the next step, a primarily dramatic movie but with a few big laughs along the way in spite of itself. It remains her best picture.
Marshall secured the best of the best for the two lead roles: Funny man Robin Williams plays Malcolm Sayer, as a socially inept doctor with an optimistic affection for his patients, and Robert De Niro is Leonard Lowe, a patient of Sayer's whose brain seems to have put up a roadblock for the rest of his body. This casting could have been disastrous, but it ends up being spot on. Williams has struggled with serious roles throughout his career (Dead Poets Society and What Dreams May Come worked, and from what I hear, Patch Adams and Jacob the Liar didn't), but here he most assuredly hits the mark. From a physical standpoint, De Niro's performance is probably instruction-worthy for aspiring thespians. He is never less than thoroughly convincing.
The plot is simple but charming. Dr. Sayer, by tinkering with Lowe's L-Dopa intake, finds the patient "awakening" within a few hours after spending 30 years in a catatonic condition. Sayer then makes a pitch to the hospital patrons to put the rest of the patients on the same treatment and, for a while, they are all revived as if nothing had ever happened. Since the film is loosely based on a true story, I'm not spoiling much by telling you the results for the patients are temporary but the lasting effects on the hospital staff are permanent. Some pretty good supporting performances by Julie "Marge Simpson" Kavner as Sayer's fawning nurse, John Heard as the head doctor that exists primarily to dash Sayer's hopes at every turn, and Penelope Ann Miller as... well, as filler.
Awakenings neither hits the manipulative breaking point, nor does it cross the fine line between super-sappy and genuinely moving. It always makes the human heart -- not the human brain -- the crux of its powerfully well-told story.
