Evan D. As a project this year we are taking a trip through time to revisit all of the Best Picture winners in history, Wings to Anora. Rain Man is the sixty-first film in that series, to see all the other Best Picture reviews, click here. Charlie Babbitt (Tom Cruise) is a fast talking car importer whose business certainly appears to be built out of smoke and mirrors. He is simultaneously fighting off a creditor and anxious buyers when he discovers that his very wealthy father has died. After the funeral, Charlie is shocked to discover his father has left the family fortune to a mental hospital in Cincinnati. A loss more devastating to the younger Babbitt than the loss of his dad.
When he inquires at the institution, Charlie is shocked to discover that he has a brother. Raymond (Dustin Hoffman) is an autistic savant residing and receiving care at the hospital, he’s also the beneficiary of their father’s full estate. In a desperate bid for the money, Charlie coerces his brother to embark on a road trip across the country so he can hold Raymond hostage for half of the inheritance. Along the way he gets to know his big brother and learns some lessons about his own life. Rain Man has a certain schlocky 80’s charm to it as the Babbitt boys criss-cross the country in a classic Buick Roadmaster. It’s a buddy comedy with some solid set pieces and one that at least attempts to have some empathy for those with severe autism. While I don’t think it is ill in its intentions, the film leans so hard into stereotypes and uneven conventions that it ultimately fails on that front. Hoffman is not autistic and plays Raymond with every tick widely attributed to the autistic community. He has no concept of humor or ability to differentiate between hypotheticals. He is functionally a supercomputer in a human body. Worst of all, his only real function in the story is to serve as a lesson for Charlie, not even as a character of his own with any sort of ambitions beyond getting to the TV in time for The People’s Court. It is unfortunate, because some of the set pieces caused by his autistic clichés would have been far funnier if they didn’t feel mocking. A sequence at the airport in Cincinnati that sparks their road trip and an incident in search of a television set in some rural southern town spring to mind. In isolation they are entertaining sequences but universally ones that find their humor at the expense of Raymond. Aside from the glaring problems, the evolution of Cruise’s character does work to some degree. He has always been better as a prickly hothead than the quasi-superhero he plays in Maverick and the later Mission Impossible films. Here he is just the right blend of charm and slime. Not so unlikable to start that we can’t get on board with the story but not so winning that there’s no room for growth. All of this leaves Rain Man in a rather confounding place. It is evident that the film is well meaning but still not really made with proper respect for the neurodivergent experience. It is sweet and funny but even the best moments are undermined by that narrow perspective. It is not too hard to see why voters saw this as an important film in 1988 but now it looks somewhat antiquated. 6/10
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