Please don't spend money on this.

Masterful Cinema

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

One of the Best Movies! Perfect proof of the proverb Old is Gold. There wasn't a second when i turned my head away while watching the movie. THIS MOVIE TRULY MAKES YOU REALIZE NEVER TAKE ANYTHING FOR GRANTED. 'APPRECIATE EVERY SMALL THING IN YOUR LIFE'. Not sure why is it not in IMDB Top 10 movies. Brilliant acting by Robin Williams and Robert De Niro keeps you immersed till the end. This Movie taught me that Watching yourself failing everyday is truly Heartbreaking.Thankyou Sagarnair6

With Robert De Nero and the late great Robin Williams the lead stars of this film I knew that I would not be disappointed and that I was not. Throughout the whole film Williams leads the idea of "not having a life", and it takes the awakening of De Nero's character to help him realise this. After the introduction of De Nero and Williams on screen at the same time the real enjoyment comes from this film, their chemistry as characters seemed real which emphasised all emotion intended from this film. Overall, great film and would recommend to anyone.

A very very slow movie based on a true story, which is remembered particularly for the outstanding performance of Robert de Niro. How on earth did he not win the 1990/91 Oscar hands down after his portrayal of Leonard Lowe? Every time I watch this movie I have tears in my eyes from the scene where he tells the girl he loves he can't see her again, and watches her leaving from the window until the end. Robin Williams is...well, you know what you're gonna get from Robin Williams - for me the best actor of all time (DeNiro is second, in my opinion the two best actors star in 'Awakenings'.) Robin Williams plays a brilliant, yet incredibly shy and nervous doctor who joins a Psychiatric Hospital in New York where many of the patients are in a coma and dead to the World. Thanks to Dr. Sayer brilliance, a number of the patients including DeNiro 'awaken' from their state - some after decades - for a brief period in the summer of '69. There's a sad scene at the end where Dr. Sachs tells his nurse how Leonard had told him what a kind man he was...only for him to effectively give someone their life back, then take it away again and not be able to do anything about it. That's a sad scene played brilliantly by Robin Williams. Incidentally, the leading female is Julie Kavner who plays Nurse Eleanor Costello - she is world famous for the voice of Marge in The Simpsons!

De Niro plays the role of a patient (Leonard Lowe) with a neurological disorder (Encephalitis Lethargica AKA "sleepy sickness". The disease attacks the brain, leaving some victims in a statue-like condition, speechless and motionless; the cause of Encephalitis Lethargica is not know). He was treated by this doctor (Robin Williams), who used a psychoactive drug called L-DOPA during the treatment. The drug awoke Leonard.It's the true story of British neurologist Oliver Sacks (it's based on Oliver Sacks's 1973 memoir "Awakenings") and a great movie!(Curious stuff: between 1915 and 1926, an epidemic of Encephalitis Lethargica spread around the world; no recurrence of the epidemic has since been reported.)