In this movie Sam (Sean Penn) displays a mentally disabled man who must fight for custody of his young daughter. The child welfare board of his native Santa Monica has taken her from him, worried that at eight years old she has already begun to pass him in intellectual development. Sam’s argument is that it’s not brains but love that counts. Sam is duly aided by an intelligent lawyer (Michelle Pfeiffer) who in the course of discovering her client’s essential humanity, discovers her own as well.