This is a movie about family issues and not a romance. A San Diego judge, Kay, is forced by an overcrowded and overworked system to send a foster child, Sally, to juvenile detention instead of a foster home. The teenage girl has problems with authority and her boyfriend is a bad influence, but Kay realizes that she doesn't merit juvie and after some pressure decides to foster the girl herself temporarily. Kay is not one to leave almost-ok alone and starts digging into Sally's background and even does a little more than dig.
The movie is about pretty mild confrontations between Kay and Sally and where all these things lead. Sally has been known to steal from the home she's in, and quickly repeats that behavior. The movie, mostly in the person of Kay, is very generous in excusing Sally's behavior because she lost her mom early and her dad gave her up. On the one hand there is a well played exchange where Sally is hung over and Kay's response is that said hangover is an appropriate consequence and she hopes Sally learns from it. No lecturing. But Kay is also pretty soft of Sally's involvement in outright thefts. She literally says "It's OK" after one such episode that even got a little wild. Interestingly, Sally is the one who acknowledges that it's not OK.
There's a nice subplot with Kay's father where Kay's behavior is a little hypocritical considering the hurt Sally experiences when unfairly judged.
While the ending is predictable in a general sense, it was also nice to see that it didn't tie up every little loose end HEA as is so often the case in this kind of movie.
