Bobbie's Girl

Some how I seemed to have missed this film and was not certain if I was going to like the theme of this story. It did not take me very long before I was spellbound with each character in the film and my heart went out to the young boy and the threat of breast cancer and the great warm and lovely love between two same sex gals. Bernadette Peters,(Bailey Lewis)," Snow Days",'99, gave an outstanding performance along with Rachel Ward,(Roberta Langham),"The Ascent",'94. Bailey & Roberta were madly in love with each other and their co-worker Jewish friends made quite a combination of team players. The background and photography in Ireland was a perfect location. If you love someone very very deeply, don't miss out on the opportunity of sharing your entire life with them. Great Story About LOVE!

While Bernadette Peters and Rachel Ward did a good job of playing a couple that is suddenly presented with a 10 your old child, while dealing with other crisis. The boy who plays Allan stole this movie, he was so adorable and convincing, he is going to be a great actor someday. Watch this movie if only to see his performance, you will not be disappointed.

Overall this was an excellent film, but there was one odd scene at the very beginning that made me wonder if the rest of the film was going to be just as bizarre. It wasn't, and kudos should be given to the entire cast, most especially Thomas Sangster, a superb young actor who plays 10-year-old Alan. But that one scene still remains in my mind as one of the most strangely played I've ever observed. When even the sharpest critics failed to mention it, I was truly befuddled.

So what is the scene I'm objecting to? It is the moment when Bailey, played by Bernadette Peters, approaches Alan at his school and bluntly reports to him the death of his parents in a tragic auto accident. (The headmaster had chosen not to tell the boy what had happened, instead waiting for a family member -- in this case, Bailey -- to break the news.) After this sudden announcement, Alan looks only mildly surprised, glances toward the headmaster, then back to Bailey, and never sheds a tear (nor ever afterward in the film, except at the end, and not about his parents). Bailey, meanwhile, goes into some kind of odd comic shtick where she attempts to add detail. "There was a terrible accident," she says, then with a squeaky comic voice and mugging expression segues into "Ooo, it sounds like a mystery where people stand around saying, 'There's been a terrible accident, ooo, ooo....'" Immediately afterward, the film merrily bounces along as she takes the boy from the school, with hardly another mention of the tragedy that has just happened.

I couldn't believe what I was seeing. In an otherwise sensitive film of the highest quality, why did the director allow that early scene to be played that way? Wouldn't Alan have cried at the news? Wouldn't Bailey have hugged him to console him and perhaps even wept with him? I found the scene tasteless, and I thought the follow-on treatment of the accident (nearly no mention afterward) to be a convenience of the scriptwriters to get the plot moving along quickly (two lesbian lovers find themselves "mothers" to an orphaned child with resulting complications, both serious and funny). Am I the only one to have been disturbed by this scene? Or is there something I'm missing?

After the death of his parents a 10-year-old orphan is sent to live with an aunt he's never seen, a brusque woman in a lesbian relationship who lives in a gay bar she owns. Not everybody is thrilled with the assignment, especially the boy's grandfather, but surprisingly little is made of community disapproval. Instead, the focus is on the relationships among the various characters. Luckily, the writing and acting are outstanding, especially Rachel Ward and Bernadette Peters as the lesbian partners and, in the best role I've seen him in, Jonathan Silverman as the gay "uncle", who works in the bar. The fact that the boy is also working in a gay bar, and apparently will be growing up there, doesn't seem to bother anybody, least of all the boy. Thomas Sangster, the 11-year-old actor who plays the part, gives a highly intelligent and affecting performance. Perhaps it's in his genes: he's the cousin of Hugh Grant.

The charm of "Bobbie's Girl" isn't so much in the story as in the telling. A sweetly sentimental slice-of-life feel good flick from Showtime, the film tells of a middle-aged lesbian couple operating a tavern on the coast of Ireland who unexpectedly find themselves with the yin-yang of a wee lad and the "Big C" in their midst. The film offers fine performances from a core cast of four who fully flesh-out their characters making for an easy emotional buy-in. Those who have become used to the usual exaggerated dramatic film fare may enjoy the soft-peddled delivery of this lilting, life-affirming drama while others may regard it as uneventful fluff.

Note - Those who might be turned-off by the same-sex relationship at the center of this film should know that the lesbianism is very understated and tastefully presented.