Bobbie's Girl

While Bernadette Peters and Rachel Ward did a good job of playing a couple that is suddenly presented with a 10 your old child, while dealing with other crisis. The boy who plays Allan stole this movie, he was so adorable and convincing, he is going to be a great actor someday. Watch this movie if only to see his performance, you will not be disappointed.

Some how I seemed to have missed this film and was not certain if I was going to like the theme of this story. It did not take me very long before I was spellbound with each character in the film and my heart went out to the young boy and the threat of breast cancer and the great warm and lovely love between two same sex gals. Bernadette Peters,(Bailey Lewis)," Snow Days",'99, gave an outstanding performance along with Rachel Ward,(Roberta Langham),"The Ascent",'94. Bailey & Roberta were madly in love with each other and their co-worker Jewish friends made quite a combination of team players. The background and photography in Ireland was a perfect location. If you love someone very very deeply, don't miss out on the opportunity of sharing your entire life with them. Great Story About LOVE!

Okay - not a bad movie, but two major exceptions:

1. (Unfortunately) Lesbianism is still very underground in Ireland, and even more so in a suburban/rural town like Bray - so it's unlikely that that part of the story would have flown. And even more so the wedding at the end of the movie.

2. I grew up in the town this was filmed in, and went to school in Dublin. I met a total of one Jewish person over 21 years. There just aren't any! Ireland is 99% Catholic, although Bray is known to have a large population of Protestants, many from the North. But Jews? Sorry, no.

So, I came to the conclusion that the writer/producer Samuel Berstein (obviously Jewish, but obviously not lesbian!) just took his generic story and transplanted it to Bray. Don't get me wrong, it's nice to see another film set in Ireland, but a bit of reality needs to be tempered in these cases - maybe that was offset by the American/English characters, but even then the English Jewish population is pretty small, too (except in the movie business...) For the record, I am anti-racism and pro-equality (& reality)

My wife and I both enjoyed the movie. Nothing earth shaking, just a pleasant enough way to spend an hour and a half. Since all we know of Ireland is what we can remember from having motored around the southern end of it roughly 300 years ago we aren't troubled by a knowledge of the reality of that country either.

I really wish that movies that come to Canada could bear ratings that reflect the accepted standards of this country. After all, marriages between women are now legal here and there was nothing in this movie in the least lascivious, so why such a misleading label?

I suppose that my only concern about suggesting such a thing is that it might bring back the silly days of the government censors.

The charm of "Bobbie's Girl" isn't so much in the story as in the telling. A sweetly sentimental slice-of-life feel good flick from Showtime, the film tells of a middle-aged lesbian couple operating a tavern on the coast of Ireland who unexpectedly find themselves with the yin-yang of a wee lad and the "Big C" in their midst. The film offers fine performances from a core cast of four who fully flesh-out their characters making for an easy emotional buy-in. Those who have become used to the usual exaggerated dramatic film fare may enjoy the soft-peddled delivery of this lilting, life-affirming drama while others may regard it as uneventful fluff.

Note - Those who might be turned-off by the same-sex relationship at the center of this film should know that the lesbianism is very understated and tastefully presented.