Baby Reviews

This tepid soap opera, rooted in issues of parental grief and child abandonment, is undermined by Farrah Fawcett's overly brittle performance, which exposes this script's basic mawkishness. Unhappily married Lily (Fawcett) and John (Keith Carradine) live year-round on a New England resort island with their daughter Larkin (Alison Pill). Though they left the big city in search of tranquility, the island offers few distractions once the tourists are gone for the winter, the recent death of their newborn son has driven John to drink and Lily to emotional frigidity. Caught in the middle of her parents' war of silence, Larkin's adolescent needs are put on a back burner and she dreams of leaving the remote village and her uncommunicative family. Then a desperately ill mother leaves her infant daughter on their doorstep, along with a note promising to return for the child when she's able to care for her. Lily immediately bonds with the baby, despite John's words of caution; she even refrains from blaming him from their own child's death. Relieved by her parents' truce, Larkin takes desperate measures to maintain the peace: When the baby's mother begins sending letters, Larkin intercepts them. But the baby's mother returns when her disease goes into remission, and Lily discovers Larkin's deception. Will Lily fall apart after the loss of a second child or can she and John put the specter of their dead infant behind them and repair their marriage? This is the kind of broadly drawn tearjerker in which characters are defined by a quirk or two: John imbibes booze and tap dances, Lily sulks and paints. Obvious in every respect, this momma-drama offers pat advice about how to react when bad things happen to good people.