Long Lost Son (2006)

the audience applauded

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

So the wife leaves her husband because he put her through law school and bought a boat to start a business in the Caribbean. Real hard life. She never makes use of her education, wants a divorce, uses lawyers to take everything, including the kid. All he wants to do is make it work for them. Loves her, loves his family. He wasn't a cheater or a womanizer or an alcoholic or anything like that. He just wants to build a better life for his child. She will have none of it.So the father fakes his and his son's death. He goes on to raise a young man who can speak 4 languages, has seen a lot of the world, is cultured, educated, well mannered, healthy, and wealthy. Not to mention he lives in paradise.Meanwhile, she remarries and has 2 very problematic children. Stepson is going to court, stepdaughter is about to get kicked out of her first week in college. Obviously she's a real champ of a parent.She finds out her son is alive, throws new family in trash can on her way out of the country illegally, and races to find him. She acts like he's a dog or some other pet, although he's already 18 "she wants him". She ruins her x hubby's life by getting the law after him and threatening him with life in prison, although he is genuine and did everything to make the marriage work, as you'll see. It's guaranteed that her son's life will be degraded by moving to Los Angeles, the butthole of the world. Her stepchildren and her new husband have some major adjustments to overcome as well.Dad ends up starving to death on a deserted island... She gets custody of the ... "man" and lives happily ever after.I have so many issues with this I don't even know where to begin. First, anybody who's been at sea since they were 4yo is not going to settle down in L.A. for more than a week. Secondly, the son wouldn't have left the only parent he ever knew for some stranger. Nor would he leave the only life he knew. Even if he did, he would swim back from L.A. after a very short time. Guaranteed.I wont even get in to the ethical implications. Suffice to say that this movie serves as proof of how sick and backwards the inner workings of some feminine minds can be.The immoral of the story... kill the good husband, mind control the good son. Be selfish because you're a woman and everyone else exists to entertain you.This movie is trash & promotes trashy values, brought to you by Lifetime, a trashy network. At best, Lifetime shows you exactly what NOT to do.

i know people have their own tastes and i'm not saying the ratings of 10 may not be genuine, but one has to question when the over-all ratings of a movie are 5.4 and people post a full 10.it always causes me to believe that person has a personal agenda in doing so and the movie deserves it's 5.4.maybe they are that actor or one of their relatives wanting to promote them or someone one connected to the film who would benefit financially, but something is glaringly wrong when i see that happen. it doesn't help me decide to see the film----it causes me to NOT want to see the film.

Chace Crawford, an up and coming young actor, walks off with this movie for TV. He's charming and does a decent acting job with a featured role, his first. Story revolves around a man who takes his son and fakes a boat accident and disappears with the result that he and his son were lost at sea. This leaves the wife, a shrew, behind. She remarries and fifteen years go by when we discover the father and son aren't dead.As expected, the mother learns this and goes on a wild search to find them. This is where the film goes down hill. This woman seems to break every law in entering another country, which is impossible without a passport of which she has none, nor birth certificate. She actually becomes a rather insipid person and you root for the father and son to lose her.Gabrielle Anwar plays the long lost mother badly. Looking to young for the part, they try getting her hair up for the older woman, but then suddenly she's running along the beach with her long hair flowing behind her in the breeze. Her mouth also bothered me. Craig Sheffer does much better as the father and evokes sympathy from his audience as his reasons for the kidnapping make sense. To keep his son from becoming a mommies's boy. Unfortunately the shrew wins out. The farewell scene between the father and son, brought some heartfelt emotions from young Crawford.There is some spectacular scenery of the islands and the sea in this film. Gorgeous photography and the good looking Chace Crawford make it a film worth watching.

Gabrielle Anwar is Karen, a woman who believes her son and husband to be dead for the past 14 years - until she sees a young man and her husband in a vacation video. "The Long Lost Son" is about a woman who will not be stopped from going to the resort location and tracking down her child.This film was a real tour de force for Anwar, who gives a beautiful performance as the mother. The scene where she hears on the answering machine that the search at sea for her husband and child will have to be abandoned is amazing. So upset that she is unable to walk, she doubles over and leans on furniture to get across the room, where she completely collapses. All of her physical mannerisms and emotions rang true throughout.In order to give the character more obstacles, however, the writer added a plot hole - Karen buys her ticket for this island, but she has no passport. The travel agent suggests that she bring her birth certificate and driver's license. Uh, this is 2006. She brings a birth certificate that's not even an official copy. Anyone who has ever traveled to a foreign country knows that if you have a ticket, you can be issued a passport immediately. Naturally she runs into trouble when she arrives and her story about her husband is not believed as he is well-liked on the island and a friend of the police chief's.I had one other problem with this film, and that is, with Karen's son missing for 14 years, how could she have recognized him so readily? In real life, when the police thought they had found Eton Patz some years after he was kidnapped, the parents broke down when the saw the recent photo because they weren't sure that was their son. And look at Princess Anastasia. It's obviously not so easy. In this case, I bought it because I went with the mystical connection between mother and child - but really, if she had seen her husband on the video first, being suspicious about the young man would have made more sense.What makes this film above average is Anwar's performance and seeing a new actor, Chace Crawford, who plays Matthew/Mark, the son. He brought a naturalness and warmth to his role - and it doesn't hurt that he's a major hunk. You'll be seeing a lot of him.