User Reviews

First, seeing what Kim has become at fifty was painful : it's not that i don't like old people, it's just that i don't like her skin care: she has now a lizard skin with less lines that when she was younger and her lips have strangely become as puffy as a pen ! I don't understand her choices for such ugly result instead of just letting the time alone ! Next, she chooses to play an heavy part about a mother getting crazy and for sure there were tension and sadness… At first, when i heard the kid wanted to go Harvard, i was afraid to see the same stinker as « the other woman » but this movie is so much better ! here the family is so dysfunctional and without money that the kid is taken into foster care and orphanage ! A bit like « shameless », we have at last a American production that is interested in the leftover. Thus, the kid thinks he has only school to do something and he becomes a « brain » straight student, with so little social skills that he neglects his friends or foster family. This situation was hard for me to watch because i was (and still be in my job) this kind of brilliant loner : what was the more difficult for me was to hear his relatives giving him support, confidence and love because this doesn't really happen in the real life or at least in mine. So instead of nudity, violence, money, politics, we have here a small movie about the essential human values and even if it's difficult to watch it, there are so few movies like this that it becomes essential !

In years gone by many worthy movies of this kind of 'social awareness" genre were made, but I'm not so sure what the situation is like now. And my reaction to them has been consistent for at least 40 years now - if you take the trouble to actually get into this (kind of) film, you will most likely find and feel at the end that it has been no waste of time. This (kind of) movie is not spectacular, and nobody very famous is in it, but it's done professionally and has something to say.

If we home in on the specific case of Mark Jean's "Finding a Family", we must admit it's more of a two-edged sword. In essence, Jared Abrahamson acting as real-life character Alex Chivescu is here to persuade us that bipolar disease (in this case even brought on by a car accident) is enough to mess up a parent's parenting - in a situation where nobody is guilty and everybody is a victim. That's terribly sad and very probably true, and there's quite a bit of that sadness and truth on offer here. The fact that Alex makes a success of his young life - in spite of the afflictions of his mother (here played well - i.e. tragically - by Kim Delaney) is based on his deliberately moving out from under his mother's influence - hence the "finding a family" of the title. One supposes that there is a secondary message of "take your meds" here. But if sufferers found it that easy to take their meds they most likely wouldn't be sufferers in the first place.

A further message - always good, but much easier to say than do is "don't wallow in self-pity", and that's also tough love, is it not?

So if you watch this movie as somebody who has nothing to do with what we used to call "manic depressive" behaviour, you will rise comfortably above all this and nod wisely and admiringly as Alex begins to get himself sorted out, even when there are setbacks like a move into a children's home which (despite reasonable conditions) does not exactly favour his sought course in life, which is to go to Harvard University.

Equally, if you are bipolar or know somebody who is, or live in such a family, just how are you going to respond to this movie and its main message?

Is it fair to entertain and enlighten the majority while wounding the minority? That's a good question that is not so easy to answer.

With that reservation, this movie has to be seen as worthwhile, interesting, more or less well done, and a kind of tribute...

This film was released for TV in 2011.. I saw it a decade later.. It is a remarkable achievement, all around. A boy goes through much adversity, trying to achieve a seemingly unreachable goal. The lead actors, as a child, and as a teenager, and Kim Delaney, as his mother, are exceedingly credible.. The supporting players give masterful performances. The only spoiler might be tht one could guess the ending of the movie. But see it to the very end. It is definitely worth it.