October Baby

As October Baby opens, a pretty 19-year-old college girl named Hanna (played by newcomer Rachel Hendrix) is about to star in a local play, with her supportive parents and her lifelong best friend watching in the audience. Hannah begins to do her opening scene, until she is suddenly overcome by a sensation of dizziness, and collapses on the stage. Her parents rush to her side, and take her to a hospital, where Hannah spends her time sitting on the roof, writing depressing poetry, and staring out at the cityscape. (Is it really a good idea for this hospital to allow their patients to go up on the roof, let alone go up there alone?)

The doctors run some tests on Hannah, and come to the conclusion that her collapse was the result of epilepsy, which she has suffered from childhood. Hannah spent a lot of time in hospitals when she was very young, but doesn't have a lot of memories. It's at that point that her father (John Schneider from TV's Dukes of Hazzard) must make the shocking revelation that Hannah is not their biological daughter, and that she was adopted. What's more, her health problems stem from the fact that she was born many weeks premature from the result that her birth mother tried to perform a late-stage abortion, which failed. Faced with this news, Hannah just doesn't know what to believe anymore. Fortunately, her previously mentioned lifelong best friend, Jason (Jason Burkey), has just the solution for her.

It turns out that Jason and some of his college friends are taking a road trip to New Orleans for Spring Break. He offers to drive her to Mobile, AL, which is where her birth mother supposedly lives. Jason is a handsome, supportive, and all around nice guy, so of course, there's no way that Hannah and him will be more than "best friends" by the time the movie's over. I mean, Jason's dating an icy blonde girl, who constantly glares at Hannah, and seems to enjoy bringing her down and being angry at her every possible moment, even though the movie never really paints a clear picture as to the source of the hostility. There's no way that Jason will finally realize that Hannah is the better choice, and dump the mean girl by the end of the movie, so just put all those thoughts out of your mind.

The road trip sequence, as the group of kids make their way to Mobile, is a particularly tedious experience. We meet Jason's friends, none of whom seem to belong in this movie. They belong in a particularly dumb and unfunny teen comedy. They're supposed to add comic relief, but instead add absolutely nothing. The screenplay seems to understand this, fortunately, for Hannah ditches the group as soon as possible to go to Mobile alone, and they're pretty much forgotten for the rest of the movie. Jason leaves his friends behind as well, and accompanies her on her search for her birth mother. Up to this point, October Baby had been a pretty passable drama. Yeah, the comic relief characters were a mistake, but at least they don't stick around long. When Hannah and Jason start looking for answers, however, the movie loses all sense of plausibility in the form of an unlikely series of events and coincidences.

Let's see, shortly after arriving in Mobile, Hannah tracks down the hospital where her birth mother tried to abort her, and finds that it's an abandoned old building. For some reason, she decides to break into the building. Why she thinks she'd be able to find any answers inside of a building that hasn't been used in years is beyond me. Both Hannah and Jason are arrested by the police for breaking into the building. While Hannah is being questioned, she tells her story to the officer, and wouldn't you know it, he just happens to know the nurse who's name is on her birth certificate! She uses the cop's information to track down the nurse in question, who is played by Jasmine Guy, in a particularly good and heart-tugging performance. Not only does the nurse have all the answers to Hannah's mysterious past, but she also just happens to have all the information she needs to find her birth mother, including the mother's business card with address and phone number just lying around her apartment. This allows Hannah to drop in on the mother she never knew, in a scene that should be powerful, but is really underwhelming and underwritten.

The implausibility of October Baby took me out of the potentially powerful story it was trying to tell. It has characters that don't fit, one too many coincidences for us to take the plot seriously, and an overall sense that everything pretty much falls in Hannah's lap whenever she needs it. The script really is the main fault here, as everything else is much better than you would expect for an independently-produced Christian film. The direction is strong (though some nature and establishing shots linger a bit too long), and the cast largely made up of unknowns are quite likable. Rachel Hendrix, in particular, makes a real impression in her first lead role. That said, the simple-mindedness of the plot, combined with the fact that the characters keep on doing only what is required to move the plot forward, took me out of the film.

I was also disappointed with how the movie seemed to be preaching to the choir, so to speak. It pretty much assumes that its audience shares the exact same views that it does, so it doesn't bother to raise any of the obvious tricky questions or issues that its subject matter brings up. There's no room for a second opinion, it simply plows on ahead, and thinks we're with it all the way. Whatever your views on abortion is, this could have been a very powerful film if it didn't play things so safe, and tried to look at things from both sides. Unfortunately, we don't really get to hear from Hannah's birth mother. She has maybe three or four lines in the entire film, none of which give her a chance to explain her views.

I would call October Baby a well-meaning and well-made little film that suffers from its script and plotting. It also relies too much on its Christian Rock soundtrack to speak for the characters, rather than having the characters exchange dialogue. We get a lot of montages, some good performances, and a lot of wasted potential. I'm sure the movie's pre-programmed audience will love it, but I found it kind of dull.

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