ViewGuide

Created Jan 18, 2020 06:16AM PST • Edited Mar 19, 2023 08:38AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Really Great 4.5

   Who’s on first? Tom Cruise to start, until Dustin Hoffman outshines him in an acting duet for the ages. Rain Man is all that and much more, a wonderful movie full of charm, humanity and insight. It won the Big Four Oscars in 1989 – Best Picture, Best Actor (Dustin Hoffman), Best Director and Best Screenplay.

   Three decades later, it still delights all who click play, triggering the trifecta of laughter, tears and wonder.

4. Acting

   Very Good 3.5

   Tom Cruise opens Rain Man in Ray-Bans watching a Lamborghini he’s imported get lowered off a ship. Charlie Babbitt, younger brother of Dustin Hoffman’s Raymond Babbitt, is a fixture in the Cruise Canon. Hoffman earned his second Best Actor Oscar by becoming the world’s most famous autistic savant.

   • Valeria Golino underwhelms as Cruise’s girl.
   • Barry Levinson cameos at the end as a kindly doctor.

5. Male Stars Perfect 5.0

   Dustin Hoffman & Tom Cruise

6. Female Stars Good 3.0

7. Female Costars Good 3.0

8. Male Costars Very Good 3.5

10. Film

    Really Great 4.5

    Barry Levinson won his sole Best Director Oscar for Rain Man, which also won Best Picture.

11. Direction Perfect 5.0

12. Play Great 4.0

    The screenplay would grade higher if it didn’t end prematurely. The story goes that the writers went on strike before Ron Bass wrote the final scene. Out of solidarity or incompetence, Barry Levinson didn’t come up with anything for his actors to say at the end of the most important movie of their careers, so it basically fizzles out. And thus Bass received his sole Best Screenplay Oscar for an unfinished Rain Man.

13. Music Great 4.0

14. Visuals Great 4.0
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 2.1

17. Sex Titillating 2.5

18. Violence Gentle 1.5

19. Rudeness Salty 2.3

21. Reality

    Glib 1.5

22. Circumstantial Surreal 2.1

23. Biological Glib 1.4

24. Physical Natural 1.0