A bath of bathos, with a rubber ducky for occasional squeals of fun. The character of the idiot-savant — a crossbreed of Mickey Rooney's Bill, Peter Sellers's Chauncey Gardner, Bruno S.'s Kaspar Hauser, and perhaps HAL the computer — attains a certain eccentric grandeur, what with his rigorous daily routine, his K-Mart wardrobe, his wholly rational (and documentable) fear of flying, his encyclopedic knowledge of baseball stats, plus math skills to match those of any electric calculator. And, what with his toddler's gait, his curious-cat tilts of the head, his lexicon of catchwords ("of course," "definitely," "I don't know," and the complete Abbott-and-Costello "Who's on first?" routine), he is eminently actable by Dustin Hoffman — though the actor edges too often into the cute and the sweet. The chemistry, however, between him and his bottled-up, high-pressured, insensitive Long-Lost Brother ("Stop acting like an idiot!") is terrible: for the longest time tediously combustible and then suddenly (and dubiously) serene. With Tom Cruise and Valeria Golino; directed by Barry Levinson. (1988) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.