Another supposedly true story brought to life as a TV movie (on Lifetime no less) that unfortunately wasted talent of two superb addresses, Beverly D'Angelo and Dana Ivey. It's not their fault. It's the fault of the with the weak script that never completely rings true. D'Angelo is an underage young lady in some kind of reformatory who sneaks out to tell her boyfriend that she's pregnant with his child, gets eight weeks of solitary and is forced to give her baby up.
Years go by and after working as a go-go dancer, she's a multiple times divorced woman with three other children who discovers out of the blue that her son died at the age of three, and after basically looking at some microfilm in a local library decides out of the blue that the foster mother (Ivey) killed him. We actually see her abusing him but not the actual death, and it's certainly true that Ivey's character is a religiously obsessed woman who abuse the late young boy by making him say the Our Father over and over again while kneeling on a broom handle.
It's rather bizarre that the character that D'Angelo plays would just decide out of the blue that her son was murdered and that Ivey should go to prison. The only other real witnesses were Ivey's husband and naturally born son who shows up out of nowhere and barely remembers anything. Even if the story is true, it is very depressing to watch and the script truly needed some major editing to really show all the sides rather than just the assumptions of the leading character. As the evil reform school matron, Mary Pat Gleason is forced to play a very one-dimensional character that makes Hope Emerson in "Caged" seem subtle.
It's also obvious that the late boy was mentally troubled and needed to be in some sort of facility rather in a foster home, so a lot of key details are missing. D'Angelo and Ivey (in her very limited role) do their best to create believable characterizations, and while the footage of Ivey with the child makes it appear that Ivey could be cruel, she wasn't completely evil. Overall, the point of this movie really makes no sense and why it was made in the first place only shows bad judgement on the lifetime network producers for greenlighting this tactless project.
Years go by and after working as a go-go dancer, she's a multiple times divorced woman with three other children who discovers out of the blue that her son died at the age of three, and after basically looking at some microfilm in a local library decides out of the blue that the foster mother (Ivey) killed him. We actually see her abusing him but not the actual death, and it's certainly true that Ivey's character is a religiously obsessed woman who abuse the late young boy by making him say the Our Father over and over again while kneeling on a broom handle.
It's rather bizarre that the character that D'Angelo plays would just decide out of the blue that her son was murdered and that Ivey should go to prison. The only other real witnesses were Ivey's husband and naturally born son who shows up out of nowhere and barely remembers anything. Even if the story is true, it is very depressing to watch and the script truly needed some major editing to really show all the sides rather than just the assumptions of the leading character. As the evil reform school matron, Mary Pat Gleason is forced to play a very one-dimensional character that makes Hope Emerson in "Caged" seem subtle.
It's also obvious that the late boy was mentally troubled and needed to be in some sort of facility rather in a foster home, so a lot of key details are missing. D'Angelo and Ivey (in her very limited role) do their best to create believable characterizations, and while the footage of Ivey with the child makes it appear that Ivey could be cruel, she wasn't completely evil. Overall, the point of this movie really makes no sense and why it was made in the first place only shows bad judgement on the lifetime network producers for greenlighting this tactless project.