“The Lost Child”
Sunday at 9 on Ch. 2
if you’re a weeper
if you watch
and weep with your mother
if you’d rather watch wrestling
When I read the synopsis of “The Lost Child,” a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie that will air Sunday night, I almost plotzed.
I mean, get this: A woman raised in a Jewish family finds out (after her adoptive parents die), that she’s not Jewish, but Navaho.
Now, seriously, if this doesn’t sound like a routine created by “The Borscht Belt on Broadway” comics nothing does.
“If you find out you’re not Jewish, do you have to give the Bat Mitzvah gifts back?”
“If you find out you’re not Jewish, can you still order 47 entrees and 345 desserts at Kutsher’s?”
I could go on, but you can’t, so I’ll continue with the review.
Anyway, steeling myself for the worst, and expecting at least a few laughs, I popped the video in. By the middle of the opening credits, I was crying; by the middle of the movie, I was hysterical; and by the end of the movie, well . . . I don’t know what happened to me by the end because neighbors heard me screaming, and called EMS, who had to administer oxygen.
Yes, I bought the true story hook, line, and sinker.
Mercedes Ruehl has got to stop acting if she cares at all about my fragile state of mental health. Like a rotten boyfriend, she’s always making me cry.
Anyway, this is the story of Rebecca (Ruehl), born a Navaho twin who, along with her brother, was stolen from a white man’s hospital in Arizona where the sickly babies were brought shortly after their home births.
Apparently, in the ’40s and ’50s, stealing Indian children to feed the growing adoption market, particularly light-skinned Indian children, was common.
Although not too much is made of the horror of this practice in the movie, I was dumbfounded.
I mean, we’re not talking about the Dark Ages here. Oh wait, yes we are – America in the ’50’s.
Anyway, little Rebecca was not only stolen from her parents, but she was separated from her twin brother.
In the early years, she was tossed from home to home and, at one point, one foster mother leaves her in a train station to await the arrival of her new adoptive parents.
Thankfully, the new parents who come by to get her are wonderful people.
When Rebecca (Ashley Barrett, great in the part) turns 13, her adopted mother dies just when the kid needs her most. God forbid, I should get a break, here.
Desperate daddy, who I was already beginning to hate, marries the evil stepmother, and Rebecca’s life is once more a living hell. She gets sent away to a boarding school.
Time marches on and grown up Rebecca meets the world’s nicest man (Jamey Sheridan) and they have a family of their own. Something’s still missing.
So after her father dies (evil stepmother didn’t tell her he was dying), she goes in search of her birth family. She posts her stats on the Internet and is contacted by a Navaho woman (Irene Bedard), who in turn is searching for her stolen siblings. Bingo!
Much to her shock, Rebecca discovers not only that she and her twin were not given away, but stolen, and that she was not born Jewish, but Navaho.
Together with her pre-teen daughters (Julia McIlvaine and Sanya Levine), Rebecca travels to the reservation in Arizona. Feeling at home at last (although her daughters are anything but), Rebecca calls her husband, a builder in Pennsylvania, to come join them.
She wants to give it all up, and live on the reservation. Right. Have you ever tried telling your kids that they should leave their comfy suburban lives and move to a reservation in the desert with people who think they look pale and weird?
Well, probably not.
Levine is so good as the disgruntled almost-teen daughter that she should get a prize of some kind, and I mean it.
They don’t tell you whether she finds her brother, or whether the reservation becomes a giant gambling casino, neither of which have anything to do with the story, but I am just curious.
Anyway, now I have to go put cucumber slices on my eyes, because they’re all swollen, damnit!