***A ‘hospital film’ with Robin Williams and Robert De Niro, based on a true story***

A shy doctor (Robin Williams) gets a job at a Bronx hospital in 1969 where he attends to several patients in a catatonic state after the encephalitis epidemic of 1917–28. He experiments with a new drug that offers the hope of reviving them. Robert De Niro plays his key patient, Julie Kavner his nurse and John Heard his supervisor. Penelope Ann Miller is also on hand as a potential romantic interest.

"Awakenings” (1990) is based on Oliver Sacks' 1973 memoir of the same name, which chronicled the true event that occurred the summer of ’69. Being a hospital movie about ailing people trying to recover puts it in the same camp as “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest” (1975) and “Instinct” (1999), but it’s not as compelling.

There’s just not enough human interest beyond the viewer being sympathetic toward the patients’ plight and wanting them to get well. It’s also marred by some blatant predictableness, like Leonard’s name on the bench and the “cup of coffee” aspect. Still, this is a tale that needed to be told and I’m not sorry I watched it. It’s just vastly overrated.

The film runs 2 hours and was shot in Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens, New York City.

GRADE: C+

One of the maxims I maintain in my film viewing of "stories based on true events" is that, if I don't know the story, I don't research it until after the viewing. It takes the fun out of the experience (like knowing the ending beforehand) and allows you to enjoy the personal vision of the director and screenwriter involved.

Despertares is one such example. A relatively old work (thirty-two years from its release to the present day) and with a Robin Williams who, as always, is a delight to watch. The story is a tough one, told in the way films were made in the nineties, of course, but very respectful of the subject matter.

The actors, especially those who play the sick (with a Robert de Niro who never forgets to leave his personal mark on the performance), do an exceptional job and you often wonder if they are not really people with limitations.

It's a tough story that will repeatedly make your heart go pitter-patter, but it's not particularly heartbreaking, nor does it embrace the easy tearjerker. It grabs you and doesn't let go until the end, leaving you wanting to go online and look up the author of the book on which the film is based.

And I doubt many authors would want a different outcome to their adaptations.