The Stork Derby

Three things I noticed about this production:

1. As a previous poster noted, there was too much shouting.

2. It was too preachy. The storyline itself is enough to make one ponder, but the messages were pushed too hard.

3. Plot exposition was handled poorly. Characters had unnatural words scripted for them. I understand that the audience needs to know what is happening and which character is which, but too often one hears characters delivering awkward lines purely for the purpose of exposition. Subtitles explaining things would have been less distracting than characters using words that would not be used in normal conversation.

During the depression there were the "Have's" and mostly the "Have Not's". This made for TV film is based on factual events about a dead lawyer who in 1926 leaves in his will that the Toronto, Onraio, Canadian woman who has born the most babies in the 10 years after his death, will recieve an award of one (1) million dollars. So the stork race begins with the largest newspaper in the country the Toronto Star, promoting who the leading candidates are since they had birthed several babies in the few years after their beneficiary's death.

The film refelects these publicized families as good Catholics who seem to pop babies out at will, one right after the other, but mostly in poverty. There is a twist at the end of this film that is reflective of the varying degrees of a families status based on their income, residence, as well as their ethnic race and religious background. Mrs. Shullivan and I both found the film enlightening, with very good acting. Our overall opinion of the trade of being a lawyer just becomes even more smarmy and untrustworthy based on the actual behaviour of the deceased Toronto Lawyer Charles Millar a wealthy never-married lawyer, who in 1926 placed in his last testament and will a prize of one (1) million dollars to the woman who bore the most babies in the next 10 years since his death and what turned out to be a rigged contest from the get go.

This is an interesting and well done piece of Canadiana and proof that we can make good pictures now and then. Well acted, well directed and well shot with none of the pretentious BS that marks so many Canadian flicks. There is a little too much shouting and confrontation at times.A few of the props are wrong (viz. models of typewriters and press cameras that didn't exist in the mid thirties.) But I find bitter irony in the fact that (for the second time) a film about Toronto was shot in Montreal when Toronto continues to serve as a surrogate for every place but itself.