First, seeing what Kim has become at fifty was painful : it's not that i don't like old people, it's just that i don't like her skin care: she has now a lizard skin with less lines that when she was younger and her lips have strangely become as puffy as a pen ! I don't understand her choices for such ugly result instead of just letting the time alone ! Next, she chooses to play an heavy part about a mother getting crazy and for sure there were tension and sadness At first, when i heard the kid wanted to go Harvard, i was afraid to see the same stinker as « the other woman » but this movie is so much better ! here the family is so dysfunctional and without money that the kid is taken into foster care and orphanage ! A bit like « shameless », we have at last a American production that is interested in the leftover. Thus, the kid thinks he has only school to do something and he becomes a « brain » straight student, with so little social skills that he neglects his friends or foster family. This situation was hard for me to watch because i was (and still be in my job) this kind of brilliant loner : what was the more difficult for me was to hear his relatives giving him support, confidence and love because this doesn't really happen in the real life or at least in mine. So instead of nudity, violence, money, politics, we have here a small movie about the essential human values and even if it's difficult to watch it, there are so few movies like this that it becomes essential !
Plot summary
For many years, Illeana Chivescu and her son Alex Chivescu were all each other had in the world in a supporting, loving environment. Romanian immigrants, Illeana and her husband moved to Michigan to attend Michigan College. They divorced leaving Illeana to raise Alex on her own since he was two, with her husband, Alex's father, no longer in the picture. Despite the obstacles, she was able to obtain her Ph.D. and go on to academic work herself, she fostering a love of learning in Alex, who had vowed, at age ten at the time of her graduation, to attend the best university, namely Harvard. But their lives took a major change when Illeana was involved in a car accident, the head trauma which resulted in her with bipolar disorder. While she required medication to deal with the disorder, it in turn had severe side effects which made her mind foggy, the result being that she was damned if she did and damned if she didn't to remain functional. This led to her going in and out of hospital, she treating Alex abusively when she was at home, and Alex going in and out of foster care. Despite the upheaval, Alex was still able to retain his perfect 4.0 GPA. Now sixteen years old and a junior at Eagle Creek High School, Alex feels that beyond his home life, he has found a supportive school environment to lead him into that goal of Harvard in just over a year. As such, Alex takes extraordinary measures to ensure that he stays in that supportive environment. The questions become whether those measures, if he is able to obtain what he wants, will be all that he thinks they will be, and how much he is willing to forgo voluntarily all in that singular focus of Harvard.
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A little bit too much to be really enjoyable (web)
Superior made for tv film.
This film was released for TV in 2011.. I saw it a decade later.. It is a remarkable achievement, all around. A boy goes through much adversity, trying to achieve a seemingly unreachable goal. The lead actors, as a child, and as a teenager, and Kim Delaney, as his mother, are exceedingly credible.. The supporting players give masterful performances. The only spoiler might be tht one could guess the ending of the movie. But see it to the very end. It is definitely worth it.
really enjoyed it.
Great movie. They don't tell you that he was actually accepted in to several universities. Also, his mother was a teacher and was working on a PhD in computer science when she was involved in the tragic accident. No indication as to whether or not she completed the PhD but tending to think she did not. The foster family also had 2 kids and a niece and nephew living with them. Other than that, the movie appears to mimic what really happened. James Welch Henderson, Arkansas 3/2/2021