Callie & Son

I picked this one up at the local dollar store. Recently, dollar stores have been buying out these old B-rated clunkers, packaging them in cardboard boxes, painting it up all pretty, and selling them for a buck. If you're a dollar store fan like I am, you know what I'm talking about.

Anyhow, I picked this one up expecting another B-rated clunker (don't get be wrong ... I LOVE B-rated clunkers). But what I got was a pleasant surprise. First of all, the package was mislabeled. It said 90 minutes. Instead, it's about 140 minutes. It looks like it was a made-for-TV movie or mini-series.

Never have I seen a movie where at the end, I felt like I had watched 10 different movies with 10 different stories. But that is what this is.

Very lengthy, complex, weirdly wonderful movie. This is some kind of great movie with some very deep points to it, yet I'm not sure what they are, other than the dangers of being an obsessive mother.

Watch it if you find it somewhere (like at the dollar store). I have a short attention span when it comes to movies, but this one kept my attention for 140 minutes.

It's worth more than a dollar. It's actually worth at least 2 dollars. LOL

A popular cast, starring Lindsay Wagner and Jameson Parker in the title roles, and featuring Joy Garrett, Michelle Pfeiffer, Dabney Coleman and Andrew Prine, along with familiar character actors Macon McCalman, James Sloyan and John Harkins, may draw you toward this film about an unwed teenage mother facing no options for herself nor the baby but to profit from his sale via an illegal adoption agency.

The story begins in a rural Texas community bearing an antiquated Truman campaign board, indicating that it begins quite some time after 1948, the one election cycle for which Harry S. Truman has sought the U.S. Presidency, along with running mate, Alben W. Barkley, who is not cited, which indicates that the road sign was posted between the time in which Truman has cinched the Primary elections that spring, before announcing his Vice-Presidential selection at the Democratic Convention that summer.

But, around the corner, we observe a movie theater marquis announcing "Mildred Pierce," starring Joan Crawford, which is released in 1945. This, quite possibly could indicate a film re-release, but questions about this production's historical accuracy begin to emerge rather immediately.

Anyway, Kimball Smythe (Andrew Prine) narrates this saga, specifying that he has yet to meet Callie (Lindsay Wagner), which provides evidence that Kimball couldn't be the baby's father, and whoever would have been is no longer a part of Callie's life, and neither does the film provide information upon her family. In other words, her back-story begins with the birth of her child, whom she is not permitted to hold, before she is sent into one direction, and he into another.

Jeannie (Joy Garrett), a lady with a past and now a waitress, befriends Callie, who arrives to wait tables during her evening shift. Jeannie continuously stands beside her new friend and offers support and encouragement for Callie to take courses as a courtroom stenographer. At the restaurant, Jennie suggests that she make lonely newspaper Publisher Randall Bordeaux (Dabney Coleman) to feel welcome, and when she later meets him in her new position as stenographer, they rekindle a flirtation, leading to marriage.

Callie consults a shady Private Investigator, Deacon (Macon McCalman, who often plays a good guy gone wrong), paying him a large fee, which she cannot afford, to locate the son whom she has given up for adoption. Deacon absconds with her money and creates an enemy for life once the now Callie Bordeaux reigns in power through her joint ownership of a powerful family newspaper operation, especially after a mass murder advances her station.

Randy Bordeaux (who grows up to become Jameson Parker) is quickly set back into Callie's lap with no objections from his adoptive parents, perhaps because of his rebellious streak and irresponsible nature such as holding up his own engagement party to elope with cheap gold-digger Sue Lynn Bordeaux (Michelle Pfeiffer).

Jeannie, meanwhile, marries wealth oil tycoon Arthur Cotham (John Harkins) and stands beside Callie, as does Kimball although he is given little to do except to yearn over his unrequited romance.

Fashions and hairstyles seem appropriate enough for the fast-paced period sketches through the 1950's, 60's and 70's, but a promising sketch of a role model in Callie Bordeaux is ruined by an over-extensive trial occupying about a third of the film after a second murder is committed.

Corrupt District Attorney Bubba Wrench (James Sloyan, who's often cast in these roles) does not represent justice, by trying the wrong suspect, and presenting false testimony to over the truth without proof to judge and jury even when the perpetrator confesses to the crime, thus teaching anything but a moral lesson to "Callie & Son," as it misses its mark to entertain and to educate by any means.

(Extra points for the appearances of Joy Garrett, Dabney Coleman, Andrew Prine and Jameson Parker.)

This movie is being sold by "Passion Productions" with the blurb: "Michelle Pfeiffer stars as Callie...." Obviously someone didn't bother watching the film or finding out much about it before writing the packaging for the DVD and videotape.

From the opening this film is narrated by Kimball Smyth, (Andrew Prine), an integral character who serves as a sort of Greek chorus, commenting on the events as they unfold. In the late 1950s Texas teenager Callie Martha Lord (Lindsay Wagner), an unwed mother, is forced to sell her baby to adoptive parents. She regrets this but, moving on with her life, Callie goes to Dallas and becomes a court stenographer. The film now follows the events of her rise from self-directed young woman to owner and editor of a Dallas newspaper. Dabney Coleman as her rich and devoted husband manages to locate and somehow repurchase her lost son, presenting him to his wife as a gift. Making up for lost time, Callie devotes herself so exclusively to Randy that she begins to dominate his life, transferring her ambitions for his future onto the young man who doesn't share them. Events from the 60s and 70s impact the story as it unfolds an increasingly sophisticated Callie and a rebellious Randy who marries a less than suitable Sue Lynn (Michelle Pfeiffer) in an act of passive aggression. Everything takes a downturn now. There is murder, incarceration, broken dreams and unrequited love. But somehow, Callie emerges relatively unscathed and manages to find a way to, in effect, start over. There is a furtive, mean-spirited energy that drives the story: entitlement, privilege, lies and secrets, issues of dominance and reprisal color the action, making it darker than it need have been. As a contrast and for its calm, detachment, Prine's narration is, arguably, the best part of the film.

Callie (Lindsay Wagner) is a single mother who is forced to deliver her son for adoption. A few years later, she meets the millionaire and owner of an important newspaper, Randy (Jameson Parker), gets married with him and retrieves her son. The story is long and follows Callie and her son until he is a married man. This movie looks like a Mexican soap-opera, combining love, hate, betrayal, blackmail, birth, death, corruption etc. Unfortunately the end of the video I watched is damaged and it was not possible to watch the end of Callie's saga. Michelle Pfeiffer in the beginning of her career, a little fat and having a very rounded face, has an important participation as the vulgar wife of Callie's son. My vote is six.