Dustin Hoffman certainly gave a good performance. But I recall one Oscar host who said something like "your chances of winning an Oscar are high if you portray someone with a mental or physical illness" - reference to Rain Man, Philidelphia, Silence of the lambs, Shine..and the list goes on.
The interesting thing is that playing these sorts of characters may not be as difficult as many people think. That's why I have respect for actors such as Jodie Foster and Hillary Swank - they play relatively normal people, but with conviction and realism; and that makes it difficult to take your eyes of them. But I would have thought that playing a Raymond or a Forest Gump type character would be relatively elementary for these actors.
Take away Hoffman, and the often underrated Cruise, and you have a fairly mediocre, long winded and somewhat boring story. To some degree, this is because the film is a bit too pre-occupied with showcasing some of the inadvertent talents of a autistic savvant. But then again, somehow I feel that would have been fine, had the screen-writers ditched the backdrop of a film (Cruise in financial trouble and needs the inheritance money). Worse still, the backdrop made the final 30 minutes extremely predictable (money isn't everything... blood is thicker than water... blah blah blah).
Certainly watchable, but tends to drag on a bit and as mentioned previously too much a predictable background plot that required unnecessary servicing throughout the film.
The interesting thing is that playing these sorts of characters may not be as difficult as many people think. That's why I have respect for actors such as Jodie Foster and Hillary Swank - they play relatively normal people, but with conviction and realism; and that makes it difficult to take your eyes of them. But I would have thought that playing a Raymond or a Forest Gump type character would be relatively elementary for these actors.
Take away Hoffman, and the often underrated Cruise, and you have a fairly mediocre, long winded and somewhat boring story. To some degree, this is because the film is a bit too pre-occupied with showcasing some of the inadvertent talents of a autistic savvant. But then again, somehow I feel that would have been fine, had the screen-writers ditched the backdrop of a film (Cruise in financial trouble and needs the inheritance money). Worse still, the backdrop made the final 30 minutes extremely predictable (money isn't everything... blood is thicker than water... blah blah blah).
Certainly watchable, but tends to drag on a bit and as mentioned previously too much a predictable background plot that required unnecessary servicing throughout the film.