Movie Review - Awakenings

Awakenings (1990)

Starring Robin Williams, Robert De Niro, Julie Kavner, Penelope Ann Miller, and John Heard

Directed by Penny Marshall

***This film is currently streaming on Netflix***

Awakenings is a pleasant enough film that I remember liking a little better the first time I watched it (probably fifteen years ago) than I did this time around.  Don't be mistaken...the true story of Dr. Malcolm Sayer's work with chronically ill patients is an interesting tale.  The problem lies in the fact that director Penny Marshall's film lacks a real momentum, taking a bit too long to get started and finding itself hampered by the fact Robin Williams's portrayal of Sayer is much too dry and bland to hold one's attention in the first third of the flick.

About forty-five minutes in, however, Awakenings takes a turn for the better as Dr. Sayer begins testing an experimental treatment on Leonard Lowe (Robert De Niro), a man whom as a youth became inflicted with encephalitis causing him to lose all bodily control leaving him in a nearly comatose state.  Sayer realizes that, like Lowe, the patients in the chronically ill ward still maintain their reflexes in their current state.  Despite being catatonic, their minds are "still present" despite the fact that, for the most part, they're unable to communicate.  Through this newfound special treatment, Leonard finds himself soon being able to function just like any normal human being and finds himself attempting to make up for the nearly thirty years he'd been unable to be "normal."

As I said, the biggest issue with the movie is that at its beginning, Robin Williams's Malcolm Sayer just wasn't a character worth crafting a film around.  He's nearly a "nervous nelly," uncomfortable in seemingly every social interaction he encounters, appearing almost wall-flowerish amongst a sea of more interesting characters.  Even the patients in the catatonic states were exhibiting more pizzazz than Williams.  Admittedly, I don't really think it's the fault of Williams.  The screenplay plays up his character as an unexciting homebody who likes to study plants in his spare time...not a whole lot to work with there.

However, once De Niro's Leonard comes into play, Williams's Sayer becomes much more comfortable in the role.  And that's partly due to the fact that De Niro is pretty great here and makes everyone around him even better.  As a grown man who hasn't really been alive for thirty years, when Leonard awakens for the first time, De Niro is forced to play a "grown up child," unaware of what happened in the three decades that have escaped him.  Perhaps it's just because I'm used to De Niro slumming it in his roles as of late, but it's nice to see that the guy actually has some acting ability to fall back on should his disastrous Focker roles dry up in the upcoming years.

The RyMickey Rating:  B-