Awakenings
Available Now
On DVD
- Critics Say
- Users Say
- Synopsis
- Based on a true story as related by neurologist Oliver Sacks, Awakenings stars Robin Williams as the Sacks counterpart, here named Dr. Malcolm Sayer. Something of a klutz and naif, Dr. Sayer takes a job at a Bronx psychiatric hospital in 1969....
- Read Full Synopsis
- Director(s)
- Penny Marshall
- Distributor(s)
- Columbia Pictures
- MPAA Rating
- PG-13
- Runtime
- 121 min.
Critic Reviews
After seeing Awakenings, I read it, to know more about what happened in that Bronx hospital. What both the movie and the book convey is the immense courage of the patients and the profound experience of their doctors, as in a small way they reexperienced what it means to be born, to open your eyes and discover to your astonishment that "you" are alive.Read the full review
Marshall masterfully plays our strings without becoming either melodramatic or maudlin. Like Brian De Palma's "Bonfire of the Vanities," hers is an adaptation that ends with a wake-up call, only here it's done successfully and in context.Read the full review
And so even if you're held (as I was) by the acting, you may find yourself fighting the film's design. It reflects a certain lack of faith in your audience to take a performance as authentic as De Niro's and reduce it to the level of a glorified reach-out-and-touch-someone commercial.Read the full review
