Themes: Missing Persons, Death of a Child, Mothers and Sons
Main Cast: Gabe Kaplan, Michelle Pfeiffer, Treat Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, Jonathan Jackson, Ryan Merriman, John Kapelos
Release Year: 1999
Country: US
Run Time: 105 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG13
Plot
Beth Cappadora (Michelle Pfeiffer), a photographer, is married to Pat (Treat Williams), a restaurateur, and they would seem to have a perfect life in Madison, Wisconsin. In 1988, they have three small children that Beth takes along to her high school reunion in Chicago. While checking in at a crowded hotel lobby, her middle child, three-year-old Ben, disappears. Despite a frantic search and much media coverage, the boy is not found, and Beth soon falls apart. Nine years later, the family has only barely recovered when they move to Chicago so Pat can open a restaurant with his father. A few months later, a neighborhood boy named Sam Karras (Ryan Merriman) knocks on the door, asking to mow the lawn. Beth notices the boy's appearance exactly matches a time-elapsed photo of Ben constructed by the police; she takes pictures of the boy and contacts both her husband and police detective Candy Bliss (Whoopi Goldberg). School fingerprints of Ben and Sam match, and the boy is taken to foster care while Candy and Beth confront the father, George (John Kapelos). It seems Ben was abducted by an unbalanced woman who was Beth's high school classmate; the boy was eventually adopted by George when he married "Sam's" new mother, and she later committed suicide, leaving no one to blame. Having grown up happily with George, Sam has no memories of his real parents. Now Beth and Pat must find a way to bond with Sam, and heal older brother Vincent (Jonathan Jackson), who was supposed to be watching Ben at the time he disappeared, and has been suffering from guilt ever since. ~ Ron Wells, All Movie Guide
William Hiney - Art Director, Lora Kennedy - Casting, Susie de Santo - Costume Designer, Frank Capra III - First Assistant Director, Ulu Grosbard - Director, John Bloom - Editor, Frank Capra III - Executive Producer, Elmer Bernstein - Composer (Music Score), Dan Davis - Production Designer, Stephen Goldblatt - Cinematographer, Steve Nicolaides - Producer, Kate Guinzburg - Producer, William A. Cimino - Set Designer, Petur Hliddal - Sound/Sound Designer, Stephen Schiff - Screenwriter, Jacquelyn Mitchard - Book Author
Beth Cappadora is like most mothers—loving, devoted and occasionally overwhelmed by the demands of caring for her family and maintaining a successful career as a photographer. With her three children in tow (two young sons and a baby daughter) Ben, Vincent, and Kerry, she arrives at a hotel for her 15th high school reunion weekend in the year 1988. In the middle of the crowded lobby, she leaves the boys unattended for no more than a minute—and in that moment her three-year-old son Ben disappears. A frantic search turns up nothing; he has vanished in the blink of an eye, seemingly without a trace. As hours turn into days, days into months and months to a decade, Ben's disappearance has a devastating effect on Beth's ability to cope, creating tensions between her and her husband Pat as they start playing the destructive blame game as well as her son, Vincent, who turns to crime. Time goes by, and with Pat's help, Beth and the children go back to leading a seemingly normal life. Then one day, nine years later (1997), a boy named Sam knocks on the Cappadoras' door, a boy who is the same age that their missing son would be and looks like the artist's prediction of what Ben would look like at that age. He asks to mow her lawn and instantly, Beth realizes that Sam looks familiar. After further investigation, she finds out that Sam is her long-lost son, stolen when he was three by a mentally unstable woman.
