Let's be clear on this one, this is a good film to watch. Picture quality is more than adequate and the characters are very well developed. The first prize has to go to the boy Isaiah himself who really was cute, no other word to describe him. The story is well executed and of course does not fail to raise emotion. What I query in the film is its political correctness. Any normal person would expect the boy to remain with his adoptive mother, as his biological mother had left him for, and even considered him, to be dead. That his biological mother, on finding out he's alive, tries to reclaim him seems normal. What is not normal, however, is that the courts give any creedence to the idea that he should be given back to her, as it is implied, on the sole grounds that he has the same colour skin as her !!! The rubbish spoken by her lawyer to the effect that "black babies should be with black mothers" should have been shown to be the rubbish it is, but it seems to come across as being the only argument that influenced the court's decision as, no other factor seems to have warranted the baby being returned to its biological mother. I am sure that if the roles and been reversed and that it was a white baby abandoned in a trash can adopted by a black family, the courts would have left it with its adoptive family on the basis that "skin colour had no importance, only the love of a stable family". This last hypothesis is, in my opinion, the just one, but it should be applied in all cases, whatever the colour of the baby and whatever the colour of the family. One get's the impression the director wants to "be good to the blacks at all costs" even when the well-being of the child in this case would dictate otherwise and I call this being a victim of political correctness. Of course, the ending is "diluted" and we see Khaila calling back Jessica Lange to look after the child when she realises that she can't cope. Her behaviour throughout the film is quite plausible and quite understandeable. What is not, it the behaviour of her attorney and the courts. I am not an American but one of the great things about that country is the mixture of origins which has gone to forge it - people of all colours and races but all American. Once you go down the line of wanting to make a black child have a black doll, read obligatorily books about black characters, have black parents etc etc, you are starting down the same path as the Ku Klux Klan many years ago and it's not better but more of the same. To get back to the film, though, I would highly recommend it but would warn viewers of its failing as described above.
Review of Losing Isaiah
