It’s time for an emotional film about taking care of a sick baby. Hallmark tends to be great at churning out super wholesome films but can be a little bit more hit or miss on the heavy drama ones. Well, I can say that they did a pretty good job with this one. I liked it better than the other Hallmark Hall of Fame titles I’ve seen because at least it’s trying to have some more positive energy here. It’s a sad film for the most part but one that does at least have a happy ending.
The movie starts off by introducing us to Susan who works in the hospital’s maternity ward. She takes care of a lot of babies and the job is difficult but fulfilling. One day a baby shows up who is HIV positive and the mom is out of the picture. Unfortunately nobody wants to adopt the baby because they are fearful of this condition and Susan finds out that the baby will be sent to another facility where she will likely die. This is unacceptable and she decides to adopt the baby which really shakes up her life and the lives of all those who are around her. Will they support her decision or begin to get in the way?
Now right away I have to give the film credit for having a lot of nuance here and not just making the situation black and white. Some films would immediately act like everyone was a villain for not wanting to adopt the baby but the movie makes it clear that this is a big decision. Odds are that if the baby does get aids, she will have a much shorter life and the odds of even reaching childhood are slim. So you are entering a situation that is almost guaranteed to end in sadness. You can really admire someone like Susan who decides to enter that situation while not villainizing the ones who choose to avoid it. The movie handles that balance well.
If anything, Susan actually takes on the role of being the unreasonable one as a contrast to the fact that she is making the right move in helping out. She gives her friend Alice a whole lot of grief throughout the movie. At first saying that she was not helping out enough and then later on for doing her job in court. Alice makes it clear from the start that she’s just doing her job but Susan just doesn’t want to hear that. I’d say Susan was clearly in the wrong here even if you can understand why she was so emotional. Surprisingly the film doesn’t really have them get close again after this but you can understand why. Susan said a lot of things that you can’t really take back and I feel like the work environment would be extremely tense after all of that.
Susan is a good character otherwise. She wants to make sure that no babies are dying on her watch and does everything that she can in order to take care of the baby. She named her Annie and even gets a babysitter, Dorothy, to help out with this. She faces some struggles immediately with her teenage son not being quite as understanding. I don’t believe the film meant for him to come off as very harsh but it was still hard to sympathize with him too much. Yes, he did have to miss a concert as a result of Susan’s work going over and the baby is a bit of a disruption but he really just needed to be supportive.
Susan did her best to absorb just about all of the work and only relied on her son to occasionally help out. By the end of the film he’s a lot more understanding but it was a rough start. Susan also kept on thinking so she could adapt to each setback that appeared such as inviting Annie’s mother when she threatened to break up the family. That’s always important because other characters could have easily given up way before that point.
Now another important character is Annie’s biological mom, Linda. Linda is going through a lot of issues here such as a degenerate lifestyle and of course the fact that she ditched Annie. The film doesn’t go super in depth on her history, nor does it need to. You understand the general circumstances right away and she is quite defensive about Annie being taken care of by someone else. The film makes it clear that she has the legal rights to victory here and will get custody back so Susan has to really find a way to get her on board.
You can tell that Linda is trying hard at times but she just doesn’t know how to interact with others. She keeps on making big mistakes throughout like smoking indoors, yelling at her kid, etc. It can be a bit hard to feel sympathetic to her because of the fact that she got her baby sick and then ditched her. You can recognize that she’s trying to get better but a start like that is just incredibly hard to get past. Additionally, since Susan was taking good care of Annie, you feel like the law is in the wrong when it decides to give custody to Linda.
Linda even ignores the 24 hour visitation rule and the courts won’t do anything for several days. Things work out in this film but you can see how those rules would easily cause a lot of bad outcomes for other kids. Linda ultimately does put her right foot forward and at least gets some moments with her kid. She may not have known even the basics of taking care of a kid but Susan and Dorothy both helped her with that.
I do think it’s a really tough circumstance to have grown up with no experience in this area. Learning on the job with no support network has to be tough and while Linda can be a bit too defensive, it’s hard to do a 180 so quickly. The more the film went on, the easier it is to start finding Linda to be sympathetic. It’s a bit late but if this was a film that became a whole series you could easily see her being one of the better characters in the end. This is still a drama title though so Linda isn’t able to escape her past so easily.
There may not be a whole lot of replay value to this film but it tells a good story. I think dramas inherently just have less replay value than other genres except for maybe mysteries. Once you know how the ending goes, it feels like the pacing would feel too slow on a rewatch. The most important thing is how a film goes on the first watch though and it succeeds there. Naturally I would appreciate the film being more of a fun one all the way through but it doesn’t overdo it on the sadness the way that other films have done. For example if the baby did not make it through the film, the score would have immediately plummeted quite a lot.
Overall, A Place for Annie is a good film. It’s definitely a heavy one with some really tough situations going on but I appreciated seeing things wrap up in a good way. If you’re going to have a sad adventure then you should at least make sure to have a really happy ending. If you pull that off well enough then it makes up for the first half. If you’re able to handle the sad opening then you should have a good time here. If that beginning is too rough, then that’s understandable and you’ll probably want to skip this one.
Overall 6/10
