Hollywood always believed that if a movie dealt with a serious theme in an entertaining manner it was somehow worthy of consideration which is why so many second-rate films like "Rain Man" ended up winning the Academy Award for Best Picture. As 'Best Pictures' go "Rain Man" wasn't quite the worst of them but you can't help feeling it trivializes its subject which is played almost entirely for comedy or sentimental value. If it's enjoyable, and in its way it is, it is due entirely to the two principal performances of Dustin Hoffman, (an Oscar for best actor), and Tom Cruise, (no nomination, but thoroughly deserving of one).
They play estranged brothers reunited after the death of their father. Hoffman is an autistic-savant, (definitely qualifying as a handicap; definitely several rungs up the Oscar ladder), whose facility with numbers proves a definite plus when it comes to playing the tables in Las Vegas. (The journey from first meeting to final parting also qualifies this as a road-movie). Cruise is the initially venal younger brother who wants to use Hoffman's 'talents' for his own ends but, this being a Hollywood movie of the inspirational variety, it isn't too long before bonding takes place and at the time Cruise's persona was such that playing a bad guy wasn't really on the cards.
If anyone ever doubted in the early days that Cruise could act all they had to do was to look to this and "The Colour of Money" where he gave his Oscar-winning co-stars as good as he got. The film's director was Barry Levenson, formerly as script-writer who graduated to making his own films with the marvelous "Diner" and whose best films tended towards autobiographical pieces set in his native Baltimore. "Rain Man" represented his attempt at tackling a 'big' subject. It had all the ingredients for popular success and it gave him the Oscar but it's still a bland, formulaic film typical of what the big studios were churning out at the time.
They play estranged brothers reunited after the death of their father. Hoffman is an autistic-savant, (definitely qualifying as a handicap; definitely several rungs up the Oscar ladder), whose facility with numbers proves a definite plus when it comes to playing the tables in Las Vegas. (The journey from first meeting to final parting also qualifies this as a road-movie). Cruise is the initially venal younger brother who wants to use Hoffman's 'talents' for his own ends but, this being a Hollywood movie of the inspirational variety, it isn't too long before bonding takes place and at the time Cruise's persona was such that playing a bad guy wasn't really on the cards.
If anyone ever doubted in the early days that Cruise could act all they had to do was to look to this and "The Colour of Money" where he gave his Oscar-winning co-stars as good as he got. The film's director was Barry Levenson, formerly as script-writer who graduated to making his own films with the marvelous "Diner" and whose best films tended towards autobiographical pieces set in his native Baltimore. "Rain Man" represented his attempt at tackling a 'big' subject. It had all the ingredients for popular success and it gave him the Oscar but it's still a bland, formulaic film typical of what the big studios were churning out at the time.