The Deep End of the Ocean (1999)

You won't be disappointed!

hyped garbage

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Clearly so much has changed even in the 20 years since this movie was made. It was as if it was an either/or choice as to whether the child is forced into a family situation that the parents, as well as the social services, could only bring trauma all over again to the child after he is found. And that it did.Why would he need to choose between the man, 2 blocks away, who considers him dad and the biological parents, no matter how the situation occurred? The simple answer is he should not have had to make such a choice. Even the ending does not resolve that issue. Could he not have spent half his time with his bio family and half with his adoptive dad, at least until he was ready to decide who he was most ready to live with? Or perhaps just keep it open and let him consider both families his?The parents act as though the adoptive father was an enemy and do not even invite him into the house. Downright cruel and creepy. I am glad that social services now realize more often that both adoptive and biological relationships are forever important to the child in question. Period. Apparently they didn't know it back then, and yet I think even at that time open adoptions and other such arrangements were possible.All in all I thought it was a poor movie, yet well acted. Some of the reviews see it exactly the opposite--great movie but not well acted, but I think as stated that the rigid either/or choice given to Ben/Sam was utterly traumatic and not something that helps anyone concerned. To me that was the real false dilemma created by the unwillingness or inability to think outside the box here.

There's no doubt that this movie brings forth feelings of sympathy from anyone who watches it. You feel sorry for everyone: for Pat and Beth, whose 3 year old son is kidnapped; for Vincent, who loses his brother; for Carrie, who never knew her brother; for Sam/Ben, who was kidnapped and lost all memory of his birth family and ends up being torn away from everything he knows; for George, who unknowingly adopts Sam/Ben as his son and then loses him. Everyone in this is a sympathetic character. So, the movie pulls the heartstrings well, but in the end offered very little depth to either the subject matter or the characters. It came across to me as superficial - it introduces the issue but only scratches the surface. Maybe that's inevitable in a movie dealing with such a difficult subject, or maybe it was just the result of a poorly constructed movie that tried to give us a sense of everyone's feelings, when it might have been more powerful had it focused on just one of the characters, and how they reacted to this insane situation. Then, it makes the biggest mistake it could have made - going for the happy, sappy ending, which was just too easy. Yes, there was a sense of uncertainty to the ending, as Sam/Ben admits to Vincent that he doesn't know if his decision to move back with the Cappadoras is "permanent," but it still seemed too fairy-tale to me.The opening of the movie works. It draws you in as you share the growing sense of panic after Ben goes missing. Unfortunately, the plot ends up being driven by a device that's just too contrived - Sam/Ben and his adoptive father living just two blocks away from the house the Cappadoras move to in Chicago, and Beth recognizing him when he shows up offering to cut their grass. I also found Whoopi Goldberg's character of Det. Candy Bliss distracting and unnecessary - and why would anyone care that she was a lesbian? That revelation came out of the blue and served no purpose whatsoever. That does, however, serve as a good illustration of another overall problem with this. Some of the script seemed poorly thought out and had little purpose: either either too cliché for the situation or extraneous to the story. The basics of the story are interesting enough to keep the viewer watching, but as a two-hour drama, it's really not that well constructed.

Noble, decent film about a crises in suburbia: a boy, kidnapped nine years ago from a nice, normal family, is returned to them--a virtual stranger. This premise was done great justice in the grittier TV-film, "I Know My First Name Is Steven". This theatrical drama has fabulous, full-throttle performances by Michelle Pfeiffer and Treat Williams as the parents, some interesting plot turns, but nowhere to go after the boy comes home. We've seen it all before--even Whoopi Goldberg as a detective seems shoehorned in from somewhere else (it's virtually the same character she portrayed in "The Player"). I would forgive the film for its assembly-line construction were it not for a downright drippy finale. Sure, it wouldn't have been as uplifting had the film ended a different way (turning on the kid's decision), but why do we always need to be uplifted at the movies? Is there some Hollywood legend that says all downbeat endings result in flop films? Well, this one did flop, so there's a double excuse not to end the thing with everyone leaking happy tears in the driveway. **1/2 from ****

Beth Cappadora is at a reunion in a hotel when her middle child of three goes missing. At first the search is informal but it grows increasingly frantic and official as they realise that Ben has been taken by somebody. The family never fully recovers and carry the scars for years. Nine years later the family have moved to Chicago to start a new life. When Beth has a local boy come to the block to cut the grass, she believes that he must be Ben because her looks just like him despite the age. The police recover Ben but is it fair to take him away from the people Ben now considers his family?The plot summary gives the impression that this is just a standard weepy that would easily screen on a weekday afternoon. However the presence of a couple of well known names in the cast list suggests that this film will give the subject a more serious approach that acts more as drama than weepy. Partly the latter is true but not 100%, and the film is still essentially a sort of weepy that has a control of it's emotions and is actually quite stable but not to the point where it is an engaging debate.The material should be thought provoking but it isn't really. What I thought would be the main thrust of the film was really just mentioned in the final 20 minutes and it was not only obvious that it was coming but it was quite logically dealt with without real emotion - this is not a `Sophie's Choice' situation but something quite lacking. The start of the film is OK but it deals with the loss too easily and I never got overwhelmed with the emotions the family must feel. Towards the end the film does a good job looking at the effects the whole thing has had on the other son's character but even this lacks an emotional punch.The cast are good on paper but they seem strangely stilted. Pfeiffer is a good actress who sadly doesn't seem to get as much good work as she gets older. Here she tries hard but can't get across what her character must be feeling inside. Williams is an OK support for her and does OK. Jackson is quite good and his character became more interesting to me than the return of Ben itself. Goldberg hangs around but attempts to give her a character through one line of dialogue about her sexuality and security in her job are so out of the blue that I was left wondering where it came from.Overall this is not a weepy because it aims higher than that and doesn't wrench all the emotion out of every scene to get the audience. However it doesn't aim high enough or reach the level where it is emotional or thought provoking, the end result being an interesting film that is a notch above the level of daytime TV weepy but not as worthy or moving as it wants to be.