thecelebritycafe.com: Movie Review - The Deep End of the Ocean

Original Article

Tragic family story – including bad acting by children.


It’s every mother’s nightmare: When Beth Cappadora (Michelle Pfeiffer) turns her back for a second, her three-year-old son Ben is abducted from her high school reunion. The search doesn’t yield any results. And so, the family has to deal with this sudden loss: Beth develops a serious case of depression, her husband Pat (Treat Williams) tries to hide his grief and move forward, and their oldest son Vince (Jonathan Jackson) has to deal with both his guilt (he was supposed to be watching his brother) and the lack of attention from his parents.

Almost a decade later, the family moves to a new neighborhood. A boy comes by and asks if he can mow their lawn – and instantly, Beth recognizes her son Ben. Will the family be reunited after nine years? And is it even possible to make up for the lost time?

The Deep End of the Ocean has quite a few things going for it: A solid cast and, more importantly, an intriguing premise. What a pity that it doesn’t make more of it.

The most glaring problem is that the makers aren’t sure what kind of story they want to tell. Is this a movie about the loss of a son? Is it about a family’s reunion or about the problems afterwards? Or is it about the impossibility of changing the past?

Instead of choosing, the movie tries to tell a variety of different stories, and that doesn’t quite work out. In the end, the different parts seem too disjointed.

A second problem is the partially incomprehensible motivations of the characters. In one case in particular, this is due to a bad child actor. Ben’s (Ryan Merriman) displayed emotions don’t seem to fit his actions even once.

The Deep End of the Ocean could have been a pretty good Lifetime movie. Instead, it was turned into a below-average motion picture.