I do not want to insult the subject matter (childhood epilepsy), but this movie is not as great as it thinks it is.
Meryl Streep is a great actress and always watchable. She can play just about anyone, from low class to high class, from nobody to somebody. She seems best suited for roles as the average every day housewife or working woman or mom. She captures all the layers of these women and make them very believable. In this case she's a married woman with three children, the youngest of which suddenly develops epilepsy. The movie basically belongs to the child actor who played "Robbie." He was quite believable when he was having his seizures and your heart goes out to him.
As anyone else would, from that time, Meryl and her husband (Fred Ward) take their boy to a hospital. The doctors give him different medicines and nothing seems to be helping him. Meryl finally researches things on her own at the public library and discovers that a diet has been formulated by another doctor that seems to have had an impact on reducing or eliminating the seizures.
She decides her child must go to the hospital where that diet is the preferred method for solving childhood epilepsy, but getting him there is a major ordeal, and a good chunk of the movie. It is interesting and inspiring to know what extremes a parent will go to for a child, so, hats off to Meryl and the real people this story is based on.
That said: the people who come off the worst in this film are the doctors at the original hospital (led by the always wonderful Allison Janney). All of these doctors pooh-pooh the diet and says there is no guarantee it will help the child. The thing is: I do not believe that all the doctors at this particular hospital were evil, cruel or wrong or had anything but the well-being of the child in mind. They were following what they thought was best. Meryl Streep was certainly within her rights to explore alternatives, but by her doing that, it didn't mean the doctors were the "bad guys" -- and the movie really takes that kind of tone.
At any rate, Meryl and the child actor are engaging, and it does touch your heart, but it just isn't that great of a movie, and my feeling was that the producers felt compelled to include certain "truths" from the lives of the people they based the film on. Perhaps someone thought those "truths" were essential, but, in fact, they were not, and the movie has this feeling of "Let's cram every single thing that happened to that family into this movie, because, hey, it really happened!"
It wasn't necessary and didn't make it better, and ultimately, this is a pass.
Meryl Streep is a great actress and always watchable. She can play just about anyone, from low class to high class, from nobody to somebody. She seems best suited for roles as the average every day housewife or working woman or mom. She captures all the layers of these women and make them very believable. In this case she's a married woman with three children, the youngest of which suddenly develops epilepsy. The movie basically belongs to the child actor who played "Robbie." He was quite believable when he was having his seizures and your heart goes out to him.
As anyone else would, from that time, Meryl and her husband (Fred Ward) take their boy to a hospital. The doctors give him different medicines and nothing seems to be helping him. Meryl finally researches things on her own at the public library and discovers that a diet has been formulated by another doctor that seems to have had an impact on reducing or eliminating the seizures.
She decides her child must go to the hospital where that diet is the preferred method for solving childhood epilepsy, but getting him there is a major ordeal, and a good chunk of the movie. It is interesting and inspiring to know what extremes a parent will go to for a child, so, hats off to Meryl and the real people this story is based on.
That said: the people who come off the worst in this film are the doctors at the original hospital (led by the always wonderful Allison Janney). All of these doctors pooh-pooh the diet and says there is no guarantee it will help the child. The thing is: I do not believe that all the doctors at this particular hospital were evil, cruel or wrong or had anything but the well-being of the child in mind. They were following what they thought was best. Meryl Streep was certainly within her rights to explore alternatives, but by her doing that, it didn't mean the doctors were the "bad guys" -- and the movie really takes that kind of tone.
At any rate, Meryl and the child actor are engaging, and it does touch your heart, but it just isn't that great of a movie, and my feeling was that the producers felt compelled to include certain "truths" from the lives of the people they based the film on. Perhaps someone thought those "truths" were essential, but, in fact, they were not, and the movie has this feeling of "Let's cram every single thing that happened to that family into this movie, because, hey, it really happened!"
It wasn't necessary and didn't make it better, and ultimately, this is a pass.