I'm not too sure what I was hoping for going into Awakenings, but it turned out to be the worst case scenario. Written by Steven Zaillain and directed by Penny Marshall, it tells the true story of a doctor who uncovers a miracle drug which he uses to heal a ward of comatose patients. The narrative awkwardly splits itself into focusing on the doctor, played by Robin Williams who you can tell is in a dramatic role because he has a beard and is wearing a leather jacket, and one of the patients named Leonard Lowe, played by Robert De Niro.
The focus is split between the two of them, but not in a very cohesive way at all. Instead, we open up focusing entirely on Doctor Sayer, after a brief look at Lowe's beginning of his disease, and spend the entire first half of the film just with him. Then, as the drug is introduced to Leonard we change the focus almost entirely to him and Sayer becomes a background character instead. It's a really jarring shift in character and the change was hard to adjust to. The focus of the film becomes how someone reacts to the world after decades in a comatose state, which is obviously where they were headed all along so certainly there could have been a more fluid way to transition into that.
Marshall never establishes a proper tone, constantly in this limbo between comedy and drama that feels awkward, inappropriate and ultimately just falls flat. At the start it wasn't that hard of a film to watch, but around the halfway point it began to become increasingly dull until the last half hour was almost unbearable in it's tiresomeness. Zaillain's script never takes on the real issues that these characters would face, taking the heavy themes and glossing over them aside from a few scenes of apparent emotional manipulation.
Williams gives a serviceable portrayal but his character gets tossed aside once the "more interesting" one comes along, and De Niro gives maybe the worst performance of his career. He got an Oscar nomination for it which is just a hilarious display of their tendency to throw any kind of award to a popular actor playing a disability, because this performance is so absurdly hammed up it's borderline appalling. His whole display is laughable and every time I was supposed to feel for this character (as I was so unsubtly told by the writer/director) I ended up laughing.
Toss in an unnecessary and dismally undeveloped romance subplot for each character and this is a film that doesn't know what it's doing but makes sure it ticks all of the boxes this kind of wreck is made to be. Awakenings is the worst kind of exploitative garbage and it does a disservice to the real-life people it's portraying.
The focus is split between the two of them, but not in a very cohesive way at all. Instead, we open up focusing entirely on Doctor Sayer, after a brief look at Lowe's beginning of his disease, and spend the entire first half of the film just with him. Then, as the drug is introduced to Leonard we change the focus almost entirely to him and Sayer becomes a background character instead. It's a really jarring shift in character and the change was hard to adjust to. The focus of the film becomes how someone reacts to the world after decades in a comatose state, which is obviously where they were headed all along so certainly there could have been a more fluid way to transition into that.
Marshall never establishes a proper tone, constantly in this limbo between comedy and drama that feels awkward, inappropriate and ultimately just falls flat. At the start it wasn't that hard of a film to watch, but around the halfway point it began to become increasingly dull until the last half hour was almost unbearable in it's tiresomeness. Zaillain's script never takes on the real issues that these characters would face, taking the heavy themes and glossing over them aside from a few scenes of apparent emotional manipulation.
Williams gives a serviceable portrayal but his character gets tossed aside once the "more interesting" one comes along, and De Niro gives maybe the worst performance of his career. He got an Oscar nomination for it which is just a hilarious display of their tendency to throw any kind of award to a popular actor playing a disability, because this performance is so absurdly hammed up it's borderline appalling. His whole display is laughable and every time I was supposed to feel for this character (as I was so unsubtly told by the writer/director) I ended up laughing.
Toss in an unnecessary and dismally undeveloped romance subplot for each character and this is a film that doesn't know what it's doing but makes sure it ticks all of the boxes this kind of wreck is made to be. Awakenings is the worst kind of exploitative garbage and it does a disservice to the real-life people it's portraying.