A Family Is A Family Is A Family: A Rosie O’Donnell Celebration
Safety Rating: Safe, but tap dancing on the edge
Friendly Rating: All ages
Quality Rating: Good, but I wish it could have been better.
HBO, premieres Sunday, Jan. 31, 7 p.m., with additional airings.
This 40-minute film is literally a celebration of the nuclear family and all the many forms it takes in our multi-cultural society, with the most important message of all – a family is about loving each other. It mostly features small children talking, sometimes profoundly, about what being a family is and means.
Along the way, the film manages to tackle some pretty tough issues including divorce, China’s one-child policy and the devastating effects that has on girls in that country and even how babies are made. Yes, much is made about the egg and the sperm getting together (in an animated bit put to a Frank Sinatra song) but how they get into mommy’s tummy is appropriately avoided.
O’Donnell, herself, does a segment talking to her daughter Vivienne about how Mommy Kelli don’t live in the same house anymore, but that they still love their children and they’re still a family. It’s a beautiful, bittersweet moment.
As is young Maya, a girl born in China and adopted by American parents, explaining how her birth parents didn’t want her because she was a girl. It’s heart-breaking watching this kid trying to get her mind around that awful concept. But talk about some spectacular modeling how to tell your kid the truth about a tough subject. Her parents obviously did a marvelous job explaining the one child policy and how that resulted in her being available for adoption.
The film is really about gay marriage, a subject I concede I have avoided, partly out of fear. I know some of you out there believe that it’s wrong, and I want to respect that. Just like I want to respect that some folks out there believe that inter-racial marriage is wrong.
The problem is, I can’t find any evidence, empirical or anecdotal, that either gay or inter-racial marriage is harmful to the kids or to the participants. And just as inter-racial marriage was way different and pretty frightening to some folks in the 1950s and 60s, gay marriage is way different and pretty frightening to some folks now. So, like the film, I have to ask, what’s all the fuss about? We can grow as a society and as our president suggested earlier this week in the State of the Union address, our country is strongest when we embrace our differences and find unity in them.
My only problem is that the film, itself, gets a little boring here and there – mostly when the kids are just talking. But there are so darned many good moments, it’s hard to fuss about it. And the bottom line is, love is the real family value. Hate will never be.
Anne Louise Bannon
Your Family Viewer
