“Gracie’s Choice” [* * * *] (four stars)
Tonight at 8 on Lifetime
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This is the kind of part actresses can’t wait to take on and turn into a caricature. Heche doesn’t.
AFTER one too many boring, soccer mom movies – dumbed-down, whitewashed, horribly written versions of “real-life” dramas – Lifetime has come back into its own with a fantastically original flick, “Gracie’s Choice.” Starring self-described crazy woman Anne Heche – as well as up-and-comer Kristen Bell and veteran actress Diane Ladd – “Gracie’s Choice” is the based-on-real-life story of Gracie Thompson, (played by Bell), a teenager whose substance-abusing mother, Rowena Larson (Heche), has borne five kids, all with different men, all with different last names.
Since the mother hardly even knows who fathered whom, the kids have no one but mom to rely on. And they can’t rely on her.
The movie opens with a raid on Heche’s house – someone’s been cooking up some crack in the garage. Since Rowena has spent a lifetime figuring how to circumvent the rules, she convinces the cops in a moment of hysteria that she let some guy use her garage and she has nothing to do with the man.
Since the kids are all hysterical with fear at this point, the cops tell them to run the hell outta there but fast.
She grabs the kids, shoves them in the car – refusing to take their beloved dog who runs down the highway after them. Up until that point, you believe she’s a victim of an unscrupulous drifter.
That little dog scene, however, is so good and so tight that we immediately know about what kind of woman we’re about to deal with.
They drive until the come to Rowena’s mom’s (Diane Ladd) house. Grandma is in the midst of her bible-study class when the rag-tag crew comes piling in the door. Reluctantly, she lets them stay until they find a place of their own. She loves her daughter and the kids but knows Rowena can bring them all down.
And Rowena tries as soon as they have a new place – first by bringing in a man who wants to have sex with Gracie, who is about 16 at that point. When Gracie defends herself and a physical fight ensues, Rowena takes her roughly aside, and scolds that this guy may be “the one” – so don’t not mess it up.
Another horrible drug bust follows – but this time the cops aren’t so nice. The kids are scattered to children’s shelters. Mom is put behind bars.
And that’s when Gracie decides it’s up to her to never let that happen to her siblings again.
The daughter becomes the mother and – even after her little sister becomes pregnant and moves out – Gracie fights to keep the kids.
The courts, of course, can’t imagine a teenager who’s been moved from place to place her whole life, is severely undereducated and is barely making it in school being able to take care of three little half brothers.
So this, then, is that story – how in real life, a kid like that fought like hell in the courts to keep her little family together.
Let me tell you about the actresses. Ladd is totally convincing as the grandmother who loves her daughter and gives in despite the fact that she knows she’s a bum and unfixable.
Bell is heartwarming and real (if too well dressed) as the teenager struggling against insane odds to keep her little family of different names and different dads together. She has a huge future.
But it’s Heche who is better here than she’s ever been in any role, ever. She makes you understand this despicable character, and if we don’t exactly sympathize with her, then at least we don’t hate her – which we really should.
This is the kind of part that actresses can’t wait to take on and turn into a caricature. Heche doesn’t.
Maybe it’s because she came from an abusive home herself. Or maybe it’s because she’s been out of control herself. Or maybe she’s just a really, really good actress.
Whatever the reason, Heche nails it. She is Rowena.
I only hope that the real Gracie – who is still struggling to make it with her little brothers, according to the afterword – g ot paid the big bucks for her “based on real life” story.
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