The Baby Dance

Stockard Channing stars in yet another tele-movie. Her performance is very good as usual and she deservedly picked up a Golden Globe nomination. Laura Dern gives a fine performance as a pregnant woman who wants to give her baby up for adoption. The movie shows the struggles of these two women and there is a twist at the end which did not surprise me.

Baby Dance is riveting. It is an emotional roller coaster to watch. Outstanding performances by Laura Dern, Stockard Channing, Peter Riegert, and Richard Luckman head up a fine cast.It examines the difficult decisions faced when a mother is to give up her child to strangers. In this case, a rich couple from California cannot have children, so they place an ad for adoption. It is answered by a young couple in Louisiana who are poor and have decided to part with their child at birth. This is one of TVs finest efforts and can be rented as a movie made for TV. Don't miss it!

I continue to be impressed with Laura Dern's range. i've been a fan since Enightened, but I wasn't totally aware of how much range she has, how warm she can make her characters, how natural despite not necessarily playing them subtlety. She's an amazing actress, and this is actually one of her finest performances that I've seen. It's full of great pathos, great expressions that sort of tell you everything you need to know while not saying anything explicitly, Her character here could've come across as a caricature for most of the running time with a lesser actress, but Dern instantly makes her relatable and likable, and sort of empathetic towards her. That's a truly great mark.

Didn't care for this one, way too slow and the subject was uninteresting. Why do folks want to adopt, especially from a pack of mobile home misfits? One look at these losers and I would have been hanging an exit. This trash couldn't afford a whiff of fresh air but they always had their beer and ciggies. Not a bad production, I just found all the people involved very irritating.

"Baby Dance" is a fine addition to the onslaught of scrupulous films about birth rights and the dynamics involved when nature is not left to its own design, or is in some fashion revealed prematurely. In "Twilight of the Golds" it was homosexuality, and in "Gattaca" it was genetic predisposition, but Baby Dance is a bit more of a human drama with very real situations. I highly recommend this movie as a thought-provoking, intensely personal look at infertility and adoption. You may not like what you see, but what you see is real and genuine.