Taglines: The search for her son was over. The search for her family was just beginning.
The Deep End of the Ocean movie storyline. Beth Cappadora (Michelle Pfeiffer) and her husband Pat (Treat Williams) experience a parent’s worst fear when their 3-year-old son Ben vanishes in a crowded hotel lobby during Beth’s high school reunion. The ensuing frantic search is unsuccessful, and Beth goes through a sustained nervous breakdown. Unable to cope with her devastation, Beth unintentionally neglects her other children, Vincent (Jonathan Jackson) and Kerry (Alexa Vega).
After nine years, the family has seemingly accepted that Ben has gone forever, when a familiar-looking boy (Ryan Merriman) turns up at their house, introducing himself as Sam and offers to mow their lawn. Beth is convinced that Sam is actually her son, and begins an investigation that culminates in the discovery that Ben was kidnapped at the ill-fated high school reunion years ago, by a mentally unstable woman who was a high school classmate of Beth’s. This woman brought up Ben as her own child, until she committed suicide. The attempted re-integration of Ben back into the Cappadora family produces painful results for all involved.
Eventually, the family decides that what’s best for Ben is to return him to his adoptive father, and Beth returns him to his house. One night, Vincent leaves the house and Beth wakes up to a phone call at 4 in the morning to find out Vincent is in prison. Candy, Beth and Pat speak about whether Vincent’s actions are taking it too far, and while Beth is entering the visitor area, she speaks to Candy whether Vincent hates her or not, and Candy reassures her he loves her.
After speaking with him during visitor hours, she reveals a man’s car was totaled and Vincent could’ve died because of what he did, which leads to the conclusion Vincent was drunk driving. They hold hands and reconcile their mother and son relationship. During the days Vincent is in prison, Beth and Pat develop relationship problems and start sleeping in separate beds, after arguing about what Pat sees of their future, Vincent and Ben, and whether he loves her or not.
The Deep End of the Ocean (1999) is an American motion picture drama film directed by Ulu Grosbard, and starring Michelle Pfeiffer, Treat Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, Jonathan Jackson and Ryan Merriman. It is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Jacquelyn Mitchard, a bestseller that was the very first novel selected by Oprah Winfrey to be discussed on Oprah’s Book Club in 1996.
Film Review for The Deep End of Ocean
There are moments in “The Deep End of the Ocean” that will break your heart. After all, the movie – based on Jacquelyn Mitchard’s novel – is about losing a child. This is, essentially, emotional blackmail for anyone with a family. Two hundred monkeys fighting over one word processor could make you cry over material like that.
Yet producer/star Michelle Pfeiffer, director Ulu Grosbard and scriptwriter Stephen Schiff still mess things up. Apart from the previously mentioned occasions, and nice performances from Jonathan Jackson and Ryan Merriman, the movie’s a floating longboat that ought to be ignited and pushed out to sea, Viking style.
When Milwaukee mother Beth Cappadora (Pfeiffer) goes to a high-school reunion in Chicago, she takes her young children with her. But when she checks in at the hotel, Beth leaves little Vincent (Cory Buck) and Ben (Michael McElroy) standing by the luggage cart. Suddenly Beth is a tormented mother, handing Ben’s photograph to detectives, describing her 3-year-old son’s features and habits for the media.
As the minutes become months (the excruciation factor unintentionally boosted by composer Elmer Bernstein’s hideously sentimental score), Beth and her husband (Treat Williams) have to live their lives riddled with guilt and uncertainty. Meanwhile, Vincent (now played by Jackson) and his young sister Kerry (Alexa Vega) cope with being virtually ignored.
Too much plot description would spoil the surprise element. But screenwriter Schiff, a former New Yorker writer, treats the characters with the same disregard that Beth does. As time marches on, the emotional content marches out. The movie plots a strange, ellipsis-dotted voyage that avoids emotional high points instead of dealing with them. We’re constantly catching up with the characters, after they have undergone their most painful episodes.
Pfeiffer, who seems far too beautiful to actually play a living human being, carries her emotional weight a little too nobly. Her pain seems regal and phoned-in, as if she’s working too hard behind the camera to get down and dirty. The emotional center of the movie falls, almost by default, to Jackson as the older Vincent, who deals convincingly with the strange things fate has in store for him, and to Merriman, a sweet-natured kid from the neighborhood who befriends Beth.
As if we’re too slow to get the kindergarten subtext, the movie deputizes Whoopi Goldberg as Detective Candy Bliss to essentially drop into Beth’s life at convenient moments to explain everything. (“It’s not anybody’s fault,” she informs Beth at the beginning. “Kids disappear all the time.” Etc.) Too bad Detective Bliss wasn’t on the case when the movie was in early development. She could have called off the whole investigation.
The Deep End of the Ocean (1999)
Directed by: Ulu Grosbard
Starring: Michelle Pfeiffer, Treat Williams, Jonathan Jackson, John Kapelos, Whoopi Goldberg, Alexa PenaVega, Ryan Merriman, Brenda Strong, Lucinda Jenney
Screenplay by: Stephen Schiff
Production Design by: Dan Davis
Cinematography by: Stephen Goldblatt
Film Editing by: John Bloom
Costume Design by: Susie DeSanto
Set Decoration by: Stephanie Ziemer
Art Direction by: William Hiney, Philip Toolin
Music by: Elmer Bernstein
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for language and thematic elements.
Distributed by: Columbia Pictures
Release Date: March 12, 1999
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