Nas Profundezas do Mar sem Fim

Here we have a story that starts slowly but develops into a tense emotional drama. Michelle Pfeiffer is not only nice to look at but she plays the role of a frantic mother in search of her abducted 3-year old with great passion and at times hysteria. Whoopi Goldberg who plays the part of top policewoman in charge of investigation gives a moving sympathetic performance. What I greatly admire in this actor is the clear enunciation of her speech. I missed not a word delivered with clarity and depth of meaning. The film explores the feelings of children and parents caught up in the problems associated with child adoptions. Where does this baby belong: with his biological mother or his adopted father? It's an interesting film because the problem is real and with us to-day. The ending may surprise you.

Michelle Pfeiffer delivers a great performance as a mother who loses her 3-year old son when she leaves him alone for a minute with his older brother. The movie is not only about how a missing child can affect one's life, but it gets stranger after the family moves to a different city and one day a child who looks exactly like the msising boy is spotted.

I personally had a little difficulty about the happenstance this would have to take in order to happen, but it did lead to interesting questions on how a (possible) reunion after such a long time would play out. Pfeiffer acts with a lot of feeling without it becoming over the top, so she steals the show in my opinion. The other actors do a fine job, but not as excellent as her. There are a lot of themes from different perspectives, so it is shown e.g. How the child feels, how the "other" kids are affected as well, even how it is for a police officer working the case.

However, I do feel the movie was lacking, though I have a hard time putting my finger on why that is: seeing what I've written above makes me feel like this movie is good, at least on paper. But the experience itself wasn't so great. I just felt bored a lot of the time and the movie seemed longer than it's runtime of about 1 hour and 45 minutes. I wasn't really in it, even though usually this type of movie is very heartfelt and captivating. Nothing - apart from Pfeiffer's performance - stood out. Perhaps it can also be attributed to the long time spent on filming what happens in the 9 year period the boy is missing. In any case, it felt like it wasn't going anywhere and my attention was often lost.

If you don't have anything better to watch, I recommend you view this movie yourself and judge if it's good or not. For me, it left me unsatisfied, but because of Pfeiffer and because of how much work obviously went into making this movie, I felt a 5 was too low a score.

I never heard of Deep End of the Ocean until it showed up on cable the other night. The whole time that I watched it, I thought that it was a made for cable movie. Pretty good performances--I think some of the other reviewers came down extremely hard on this movie. Not generally my kind of movie(emotional chick/family movie), but I was pleasantly surprised, even though I must say that it did have that "Lifetime Channel", feel about it. 7/10 stars

I think that I would have liked this movie a LOT more if I'd never read the book! If anyone of you have the chance, READ the book! Oh, it's AWESOME!!! In my opinion, the movie left out some stuff that would have made it a LOT more interesting!!! Some people seem to think that parts of the movie are unrealistic, but when you read the book and get all the detail and everything, it starts to become a lot more believable than it is in the movie. Plus, the older brother has a MUCH larger role in the book, which makes more sense than how they protrayed him in the movie. Anyway, I guess you can tell, what I'm trying to say is, READ THE BOOK!!!! :-)

Ulu Grosbard has directed this fine adult drama adapted from the best-selling novel by Jacquelyn Mitchard. Michelle Pfeiffer and Treat Williams portray Beth and Pat Cappadora, parents of three youngsters. On a trip to her high school reunion, Beth loses her three year old son in a busy hotel lobby. The boy is absent from the family for nine years, after which he is surprisingly returned to his birth family. This is just the bare bones of the plot. However, it is the touching performances of all of the principals which transcend the television movie-of-the-week sound of the plot.

Michelle Pfeiffer adds another moving performance to her gallery of roles. If the film had been released in the fall of 1998, as was originally planned, she might have had an Academy Award nomination. Treat Williams' role is less defined, but it is alway a pleasure to watch this under-used and under-rated actor. However, it is Jonathan Jackson and Ryan Merriman as the oldest son and the lost boy who make this such an emotionally satisfying drama. Whoopi Goldberg adds some needed humor to the serious proceedings as the detective assigned to the case.

Stephen Schiff, writer for the New Yorker, has done a lean adaptation of the novel. Grosbard has unpretentiously directed this fine cast. "The Deep End of the Ocean" is one of the best contemporary dramas to come along in quite a while.