[5] Rain Man competed at the 39th Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the highest prize: the Golden Bear.

Praise was given to Levinson's direction, the performances (particularly Cruise and Hoffman), the screenplay, the musical score, the cinematography, and the film's portrayal of autism.

[8] Arrogant collectibles dealer Charlie Babbitt is in the middle of importing four grey market Lamborghinis to Los Angeles for resale.

When Charlie learns that his estranged father Sanford Babbitt has died, he and his girlfriend Susanna travel to Cincinnati to settle the estate.

He inherits only a group of rosebushes and a classic 1949 Buick Roadmaster convertible over which he and Sanford had clashed, while the remainder of the $3 million estate is going to an unnamed trustee.

They make slow progress because Raymond insists on sticking to his routines, which include watching The People's Court on television every day, getting to bed by 11:00 p.m., and refusing to travel when it rains.

Having passed Las Vegas, he and Raymond return to Caesars Palace and devise a plan to win the needed money by playing blackjack and counting 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.

In drafting the story for Rain 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.

Following the success of Bill, the made-for-TV movie he had written about Sackter, Morrow met Kim Peek and was wildly intrigued by his savant syndrome.

[9] Roger Birnbaum was the first studio executive to give the film a green light; he did so immediately after Barry Morrow pitched the story.

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.

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.

[25] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A", on a scale of A+ to F.[26] Vincent Canby of The New York Times called Rain Man: 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.

"[29] Amy Dawes of Variety 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 from The New Yorker magazine critic Pauline Kael, who said, "Everything in this movie is fudged ever so humanistically, in a perfunctory, low-pressure way.

The latter is primarily due to autism's being more broadly defined in newer editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, particularly versions III-R and IV.

[9] Characters like Raymond Babbitt, whose characterization has been criticized for adhering to stereotypes, 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.

[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.

[54] The cold open sketch in the April 1, 1989, installment of Saturday Night Live spoofed both the film and the Pete Rose gambling scandal at the time.

Those criticizing this decision included film director Barry Levinson, co-screenwriter Ronald Bass, and George Kirgo (at the time, the President of the Writers Guild of America, West).