“I’m an excellent driver.”

Charlie Babbit (Tom Cruise) is a Los Angeles car dealer who learns that his father, with whom he had no relationship with for years, has passed away. Shortly after, he finds out that the will has been given to someone else, though he has no idea who it could be. Upon returning to his home of Cincinnati, he finds out that he has a brother with high-functioning autism named Raymond (Dustin Hoffman), and that the will is being left to the institution that Raymond lives at. In order to get the money, Charlie gets his brother checked out of the institution to return back to California. However, on the way back, both Charlie and Raymond start to develop a brotherly bond, and Charlie’s motivations slowly turn into something other than just money.

Now listen, I’m no expert when it comes to autism, but I’ve been around plenty of people with autism to where I would say I can definitely identify an accurate portrayal of someone with it, and Dustin Hoffman’s performance in this film as Raymond is absolutely unreal. There are definitely some inaccurate portrayals of autism that are kind of just meant to serve the story, but for the most part, it’s a pretty crazy realistic depiction. The mannerisms, the way he talks, and the way he gets his feelings out are all things that I’ve personally seen in my own life, mainly when I helped out with the special needs class in school.

I also found Tom Cruise to be a really good lead as the main character, Charlie. His character arc was definitely compelling, starting off as someone who was simply driven by money and was kind of bitter due to his family’s past, to someone who learns how to care for someone else, other than his girlfriend. He starts off very impatient and doesn’t understand Raymond at all, and in fact, kind of goes off on him a couple of times, but over the course of the run time, you see him very slowly start to learn how to care for his brother and develop a brotherly love for him.

One thing that was interesting was how different the first and second halves of this film were from each other. The first half is kind of a “buddy adventure,” so to speak, and is very lighthearted for the most part. Nothing too serious happens; it’s just kind of a sweet and fun story to watch that was surprisingly full of a lot of humor. Raymond’s behaviors and the way that Charlie deals with his frustrations and impatience with him are so realistic that they made for some good laughs, without it being disrespectful by any means, I would say. It doesn’t ever feel like it is making fun of autism, but instead, giving an interesting and accurate look at what it is like to live with someone who has it.

The second half, on the other hand, is a lot more emotional and sweet. It never really gets sad, I would say, but a lot more poignant, and this was definitely the part of the film that I enjoyed the most. Again, just seeing this simple story of two brothers, one of whom happens to have autism, develop a friendship with one another was extremely heartfelt and neat. Charlie also goes from someone who is really only fun to watch, probably just because it’s Tom Cruise, to be honest, and not necessarily someone you root for, to someone you well, root for because you see that there is actually compassion inside of him. It had just been kind of lost due to what happened with his relationship with his father.

Now, Rain Man, as much as I enjoyed it, isn’t exactly a perfect film. The main mixed that I came up with, which I would say mostly leans in the negative direction, is that while the portrayal of autism is mostly accurate, there is definitely a caveat. Raymond, really just for movie reasons, has these super-intelligent abilities that are tied to his autism that are used in clever ways in the film to make for some interesting scenes, but definitely felt a little unrealistic to me while I was watching it. After doing a little bit of research, I found out that these abilities are, in fact, not very realistic. This one inaccuracy of autism isn’t exactly offensive by any means, but it is definitely something that stretched my believability quite a bit.

As far as pure negatives go, I only have one, and that is that I think Rain Man is just a little bit too long. I wouldn’t say it ever really dragged, thankfully, but there were a couple of scenes that essentially had the same impact on the narrative as other scenes. I would say that if this movie had some scenes cut out and was trimmed down just a little bit, I would bump up the score to being great instead of just really good. It’s not a huge negative, and I never found the film boring by any means, but that was definitely the one thing that stood out to me that I would say fits into this category.

By the end of it, though, I found Rain Man to be a really neat and simple story, and one that easily fits into the “feel good” category of movies out there. If you haven’t checked it out before, I’d highly recommend it.