Here's my review for Awakenings and boy is it quite a movie.
Plot: Dr. Sayer is a dedicated and caring physician at a local hospital where he especially works with Catatonia. Sayer begins to discover certain stimuli that reaches beyond the patients' states except for one particular patient named Leonard who is able to communicate via Ouija board. But when he hears about the L-Dopa drug and what it does for people with Parkinson's disease, Sayer decides to use the drug on Leonard believing that it can be used as a breakthrough for all the patients.
Wow. Just wow. This tells a remarkable story about what it means to be alive and to be free making it very moving and heartwarming. And nowhere is that spectacularly shown then in the performances from Robert DeNiro and Robin Williams. DeNiro did an excellent job with how he spoke, moved reacted to what was happening around him. When I brought up that I finally saw this movie to my brother Tommy, he expressed how this movie expresses that Robin Williams is a very underrated actor. And he's absolutely right. This is a Robin Williams that we should really see more often: a great dramatic actor. In this film he does no voices, says no jokes, just doesn't try to be funny in any way. It's just pure dramatic acting and he does a wonderful job at it to the point where it's just doesn't make sense to me that he wasn't even nominated for his performance at the Oscars that year. This is a side of Robins Williams as an actor that I think we should see much more of. Heck, I recently found out that he's in the upcoming movie The Butler later this year and it looks like he'll be serious in that one too which would be awesome. The rest of the performances are very well done as well, Julie Kavner seems to be the most notable aside from DeNiro and Williams (fun fact; she's Marge Simpsons from The Simpsons.) And of coarse the story just draws you to want to know more about what happened to the character and what is being done today with Cantonia or things related to that.
And that's my review for Awakenings. It tells a dramatic and moving story with wonderful performances from DeNiro and Williams and a message that expresses what it means to be alive and interest you more about what is happening today about a subject like Cantonia. It's a great movie, highly recommended.
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