WHAT WE THOUGHT OF IT:

I meant to write a simple review of a poignant film which handles topics like parenting, metal disabilities, society's expectations and the maniacally competitive world we live in with tenderness and humanity.
Unfortunately, after reading some of the reviews I decided I should also make a comment on how this movie was received by some critics:
They just didn't get it !
They are exactly the kind of people the movie analyses, which would explain some of the cynicism with which they wrote their "reviews". But have we sunk this low? Have we become the digital, efficient, practical, scientific products of our society and nothing else?
Do I mean to say that everybody must have the same experience I did, crying from beginning to end ? Watching with amazement how brilliantly the actors managed to bring to life all of the subtle nuances of their relationship?
Of course not, but when the criticism offered is that the movie is trying to make you cry or that Sean Penn is embarrassing himself for choosing to do a movie that is about a retarded man and his fight for his daughter, then something must be said !

15% of the general U.S. non-institutionalized population, approximately 38 million people, experience some activity limitation due to chronic health conditions or impairments. 7.5 million people have mental disabilities in the US alone !

Movies about individual dramas should bring to an audience the details they have missed about their own lives. They should encourage what is best in human kind and show how fallible we all are. They should breed acceptance and present our differences in a way that makes our egoistical selves look around for once and realize that there are other stories besides our own.
This movie does that beautifully. If only those critics had understood !