$354.8million[2][3] ($943 million in 2024 dollars)[4]
Rain Man is a 1988 Americanroadcomedy-drama film directed byBarry Levinson and written byBarry Morrow andRonald Bass. It tells the story of abrasive and selfishwheeler-dealer Charlie Babbitt (Tom Cruise), who discovers that his estranged father has died and bequeathed his multimillion-dollar estate to his other son, Raymond (Dustin Hoffman), anautisticsavant whose existence Charlie was unaware of. Morrow created the character of Raymond after meeting real-life savantKim Peek; his characterization was based on both Peek andBill Sackter, a good friend of Morrow who was the subject ofBill, an earlier film that Morrow wrote.[5]
As of 2024[update],Rain Man is the only film to win both the Berlin International Film Festival's highest award and the Academy Award for Best Picture in the same year. It was also the last film released byMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) to be nominated for Best Picture untilLicorice Pizza in2021 — 33 years later.[8]
Arrogant collectibles dealer Charlie Babbitt is in the middle of importing fourgrey marketLamborghinis toLos Angeles for resale. He needs to deliver the cars to impatient buyers who have already made down payments to repay the loan he took out to buy them, but theEPA is holding the cars at the port because they have failedemission tests. Charlie directs an employee to lie to the buyers while he stalls his creditor.
When Charlie learns that his estranged father Sanford Babbitt has died, he and his girlfriend Susanna travel toCincinnati to settle the estate. He inherits only a group of rosebushes and a classic 1949Buick Roadmaster convertible over which he and Sanford had clashed, while the remainder of the $3 million estate is going to an unnamedtrustee. He learns that the money is being directed to a localmental institution, where he meets his elder brother Raymond, of whom he was unaware.
Raymond is anautisticsavant and adheres to strict routines. He hassuperb recall, but he shows little emotional expression, except when in distress. Charlie spirits Raymond out of the mental institution and into a hotel for the night. Disheartened with the way Charlie treats Raymond, Susanna leaves him. Charlie asks Raymond's doctor, Dr. Gerald Bruner, for half the estate in exchange for Raymond's return, but Bruner refuses. Charlie decides to attempt to gain custody of his brother to get control of the money.
After Raymondrefuses to fly to Los Angeles, he and Charlie resort to driving there instead. They make slow progress because Raymond insists on sticking to his routines, which include watchingThe People's Court on television every day, getting to bed by 11:00 p.m., and refusing to travel when it rains. He also objects to traveling on theInterstate after they encounter a car accident.
During the course of the journey, Charlie learns more about Raymond, including his ability to instantlyperform complex calculations andcount hundreds of objects at once, far beyond the normal range of human abilities. He also realizes that Raymond had lived with the family as a child and was the "Rain Man" (Charlie's infantile pronunciation of "Raymond"), a comforting figure Charlie had remembered as an imaginary friend. Raymond had saved an infant Charlie from being scalded by hot bathwater one day, but Sanford blamed Raymond for nearly injuring Charlie, and committed him to the institution, as he was unable to speak up for himself and correct the misunderstanding.
Charlie's creditorrepossesses the Lamborghinis, forcing him to refund his buyers' down payments and leaving him deeply in debt. Having passedLas Vegas, he and Raymond return toCaesars Palace and devise a plan to win the needed money by playingblackjack andcounting cards. Although the casino bosses obtain videotape evidence of the scheme and ask them to leave, Charlie successfully wins $86,000 to cover his debts. He also reconciles with Susanna, who has rejoined the brothers in Las Vegas.
Returning to Los Angeles, Charlie meets with Bruner, who offers him $250,000 to walk away from Raymond. Charlie refuses, saying he is no longer upset about being cut out of his father's will, but he wants to have a relationship with his brother. At a meeting with a court-appointed psychiatrist, Raymond proves to beunable to decide for himself what he wants. Charlie stops the questioning and tells Raymond he is happy to have him as his brother. As Raymond and Bruner board a train to return to the institution, Charlie promises to visit in two weeks.
A now-abandoned gas station andgeneral store inCogar, Oklahoma, was used in a scene from the film. The Colvert sign has since been removed, revealing the full name of the business.
In drafting the story forRain Man, Barry Morrow decided to base Raymond Babbitt on his experiences with both Kim Peek and Bill Sackter, two men who had gained notoriety and fame for their intellectual disabilities and, in Peek's case, for his abilities as a savant that were evident in high speed reading and extremely detailed memory. Prior to the conception ofRain Man, Morrow had formed a friendship with the intellectually disabled Sackter, and, in doing so, ended up taking some situational aspects from his friendship and using them to help craft the relationship between Charlie and Raymond. Following the success ofBill, the made-for-TV movie he had written about Sackter, Morrow met Kim Peek and was wildly intrigued by his savant syndrome. Going into the creation of the film, Morrow was still essentially unaware of the intricacies of the condition, as well as of autism itself; instead deciding that the movie was less about Raymond's intellectual disability, and more about the relationship formed between Raymond and Charlie.[9]
Roger Birnbaum was the first studio executive to give the film agreen light; he did so immediately after Barry Morrow pitched the story. Birnbaum received "special thanks" in the film's credits.[1]
For a year prior to playing Raymond Babbitt, Hoffman prepared to portray Raymond's autism by seeking out and educating himself on other autistic people, particularly those with savant syndrome. Hoffman had some experience with disabled individuals prior to filming, having worked at theNew York Psychiatric Institute when he was younger. Inspiration for the portrayal of Raymond Babbitt's mannerisms was drawn from a multitude of sources, but he thanked three men in his Oscar acceptance speech.[17] One was Peter Guthrie, the autistic brother of Kevin Guthrie, a Princeton football player with whom Hoffman was in touch at the time.[18] Another was autistic savant Joseph Sullivan, who was the subject of two documentary films[19] and whose mother, Dr.Ruth Sullivan, was the founding president of the Autism Society of America and served as a consultant on the film. The third was savant Kim Peek, with whom Hoffman met as part of his research of the role, wherein he would observe and mimic Peek's actions, attempting to give an accurate portrayal of what an individual with savant syndrome might act like. His mimicry of Peek's savant syndrome was deemed a poor fit for the character by Hoffman, resulting in Hoffman's decision to make Babbitt not only a man with savant syndrome, but also with autism.[9]
Principal photography included nine weeks offilming on location inCincinnati and throughout northernKentucky.[20] Other portions were shot in the desert nearPalm Springs, California.[21]: 168–71 There was originally a different ending to the movie drafted by Morrow that differed from Raymond's going back to the institution. Morrow ultimately decided to drop this ending in favor of Raymond's returning to the institution, as he felt the original ending would not have stuck with the viewers as effectively as the revised ending did.[9] Almost all of the principal photography occurred during the1988 Writers Guild of America strike; one key scene that was affected by the lack of writers was the film's final scene.[5] Bass delivered his last draft of the script only hours before the strike started and spent no time on the set.[12]
Rain Man debuted December 16, 1988, and was the second highest-grossing film at the weekendbox office (behindTwins), with $7million.[22] It reached the first spot the weekend of December 30 – January 2, finishing 1988 with $42million.[23] The film would become the highest-grossing U.S. film of 1988 by earning more than $172million. Worldwide figures vary, though.Box Office Mojo claims that the film grossed over $354million worldwide,[2] whileThe Numbers reported that the film grossed $412.8million worldwide.[3]
Onreview aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes,Rain Man holds an approval rating of 88%, based on 136 reviews, with an average rating of 8.10/10. The website's critical consensus states: "This road-trip movie about an autistic savant and his callow brother is far from seamless, but Barry Levinson's direction is impressive, and strong performances from Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman add to its appeal."[24]Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 65 out of 100, based on 18 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[25] Audiences polled byCinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A", on a scale of A+ to F.[26]
becomingly modest, decently thought-out, sometimes funny film"; Hoffman's performance was a "display of sustained virtuosity ... [that] makes no lasting connections with the emotions. Its end effect depends largely on one's susceptibility to the sight of an actor acting nonstop and extremely well, but to no particularly urgent dramatic purpose.[27]
Canby considered the "film's true central character" to be "the confused, economically and emotionally desperate Charlie, beautifully played by Mr. Cruise."[27]Roger Ebert gave the film three and a half stars out of four. He wrote:
Hoffman proves again that he almost seems to thrive on impossible acting challenges. ... I felt a certain love for Raymond, the Hoffman character. I don't know quite how Hoffman got me to do it.[28]
Gene Siskel also gave the film three and a half stars out of four, singling out Cruise for praise: "The strength of the film is really that of Cruise's performance...the combination of two superior performances makes the movie worth watching."[29]
Amy Dawes ofVariety wrote that "one of the year's most intriguing film premises ... is given uneven, slightly off-target treatment"; she called the road scenes "hastily, loosely written, with much extraneous screen time", but admired the last third of the film, calling it a depiction of "two very isolated beings" who "discover a common history and deep attachment".[30]
One of the film's harshest reviews came fromThe New Yorker magazine criticPauline Kael, who said, "Everything in this movie is fudged ever so humanistically, in a perfunctory, low-pressure way. And the picture has its effectiveness: people are crying at it. Of course they're crying at it—it's a piece of wetkitsch."[31]
Rain Man was placed on 39 critics' "ten best" lists in 1988, based on a poll of the nation's top 100 critics.[32]
The release ofRain Man in 1988 coincided with a tenfold increase in funding for medical research and diagnoses of individuals for autism. The latter is primarily due to autism's being more broadly defined in newer editions of theDiagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, particularly versionsIII-R andIV.[45]: 389–401 The movie is credited, however, with significantly increasing awareness of autism among the general public.[45]: 354-380
Rain Man is known, in particular, for its portrayal of a man with both autism and savant skills, leading much of its viewing audience to incorrectly assume the intellectual capabilities of autistic people at large.[9] Characters like Raymond Babbitt, whose characterization has been criticized for adhering tostereotypes, are portrayed as having an otherworldly intellectual ability that, rather than disable them from living a "normal" life, instead assists them in a nearly magical way. Although having savant abilities is certainly a possibility for autistic individuals, the combination is incredibly rare.[46] Conversely,Rain Man has also been seen as dispelling a number of other misconceptions about autism, and improving public awareness of the failure of many agencies to accommodate autistic people and make use of the abilities they do have, regardless of whether they have savant skills or not.[47]
Since Dustin Hoffman's 1989Academy Award win for his performance inRain Man, about half of allBest Actor trophies have been awarded for portrayals of characters who are disabled in some way; none of these recipients share their characters' disabilities in real life.[48][49] Just one year after Hoffman's win,Daniel Day-Lewis (thus far the only actor to have won three awards in the category) garnered his first Best Actor win for his portrayal ofcerebral palsy patientChristy Brown inMy Left Foot. TheAcademy's incentivizing of such casting practices has drawn criticism from disabled actors andself-advocates, who argue that these decisions sideline more authentic stories about disabled characters, in favor of leveraging already-established actors' prestige.[50][51] This pattern has even been satirized by the 2008 filmTropic Thunder (in which Tom Cruise also appears), whereinRobert Downey Jr.'s character, Kirk Lazarus, chastises a fellow actor for portraying a character whose developmental disability is deemed too alienating for a mainstream audience.[52]
Rain Man is also known for popularizing the misconception thatcard counting is illegal in the United States.[53]
References toRain Man, Dustin Hoffman's performance in particular, have become a popular shorthand for autism and savantism. In the final episode of thefirst season ofCommunity, Pierce calls Abed "Rain Man" when listing members of the study group; Abed had been described previously as havingAsperger's Syndrome, which is now diagnosed as autism spectrum disorder.[56]
In June 1989, at least fifteen major airlines showed edited versions ofRain Man that omitted the scene involving Raymond's refusal to fly, mentioning the crashes ofAmerican Airlines Flight 625,Delta Air Lines Flight 191, andContinental Airlines Flight 1713, except on Australia-basedQantas. Those criticizing this decision included film director Barry Levinson, co-screenwriter Ronald Bass, andGeorge Kirgo (at the time, the President of theWriters Guild of America, West). "I think it's a key scene to the entire movie", Levinson said in a telephone interview. "That's why it's in there. It launches their entire odyssey across country – because they couldn't fly." Although some of those airlines cited as justification avoiding having airplane passengers feel uncomfortable in sympathy with Raymond during the in-flight entertainment, the scene was shown intact on flights of Qantas, and commentators noted that Raymond mentionsit as the only airline whose planes have "never crashed".[57][58]
The film is credited with introducing Qantas's safety record to U.S. consumers.[59][60] However, contrary to the claims made in the film, Qantas aircraft have been involved ina number of fatal accidents since the airline's founding in 1920 (although none involving jet aircraft, with the last incident taking place in December 1951).[61]
Two 1949 Roadmaster convertibles were used in the filming, one of which had its rear suspension stiffened to bear the additional load of camera equipment and a cameraman. After filming completed, the unmodified car was acquired by Hoffman, who had it restored and added it to his collection. He kept it for 34 years.Hemmings Motor News reported that the car was auctioned in January 2022 byBonhams inScottsdale, Arizona, and sold for $335,000.[62] The camera-carrying car was similarly acquired by Barry Levinson, who had it restored byWayne Carini of theChasing Classic Cars television series a few years later.
