Everybody's Baby: The Rescue of Jessica McClure (1989)
Based on the true story of baby Jessica McClure who fell into a drain pipe in her back yard while playing. She was stuck in the pipe about 20 to 30 feet down and it took rescuers 58 hours to get her out. There was fear that if they shook the earth too much with machinery they could cause Jessica to fall further down and die.
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Reviews
If you don't like this, we can't be friends.
Don't Believe the Hype
Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.
Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.
Who'd ever think that a full movie about a baby falling into a drainpipe would be so exciting, sad and suspenseful? For a Lifetime movie, Everybody's Baby gets really addictive to watch, because you wonder whether or not baby Jessica will even make it out alive. I was questioning throughout the movie if she'd live; this isn't Disney, Lifetime often has characters die in the end, but this movie isn't just about a baby, it's about how a town can put its differences aside to pull resources together and have the child returned safely to Cissy and Chip (Cissy was on the phone when Jessica got stuck). It's shockingly a true story, can you believe this actually happened? And I think that for a dramatized version of the story it was very well-acted and portrayed. Jessie Jones plays the role of the b*tchy, stuck-up doctor very convincingly, and Laura Loesch, who plays Jessica, did a great job, especially for an infant (if I was that age I'd find being in a movie set to be very stressful). I really loved the background soundtrack and wish I could buy it somewhere.
I watched this one night on TV when there wasn't much else on and wondered how they could make this film last nearly 2 hours? You get taken in by the emotion of it all, I found myself shouting at certain characters, like Mother for being so stupid to leave kids that young near a very deep well only covered by a plant pot? And the guy in charge who refused to listen to the guy offering him new water jet drilling ( maybe Jessica would have gotten out sooner? ) And then there was the guy sent to pull her out who was not strong emotionally. The only downside was the ending, it would have been good to have known more about what happened afterwards? All the acting was very good especially the actress playing the part of the mother.
This is a truly good movie. It has managed to captured the event and the people in a special way. The acting and directing are good and the story is well written. There is a really good score by Mark Snow too in there, but at the most intense scenes there are no music at all. I believe that it was a very good thing to cut the music as the silence made the scenes more dramatic then any musical score would.If you are a parent I believe this movie would be much harder to watch then if you're not. However, the story is touching no matter what. I'm no parent nor a very sentimental guy, but I find this movie very touching. The way people can care and the way anything is possible if you just want it bad enough.The movie brings up several interesting things. Among them the power of the media. It was the media who made this story, and so they could have turned it in any direction, really. It was the media who made people care.If you get the chance don't let this movie go unseen. Espesially if you're a parent.
As I am a daddy, this movie was hard for me to watch.Shoot! The event was hard to hear about when it happened and I wasn't even a daddy then.There are many views of this event and many levels on which to examine it. Some of the possibly valid ways would sound mean. (For example if I wanted to, (which I don't!) I COULD say poor children die every day, and I don't know about it and don't suffer for it, the way I did for Jessica McClure, because they die in a common, rather than an unusual way, and they are further away, than she was, and don't get the expedient media attention that Jessica got. But I am not (at least not yet) that cynical. But the thing that made this movie was the SOUND of the little two-year old girl hooting and hollering up the hole, from twenty feet below. And the look on her dad's face. (There, but for the grace of God, might I be.) I don't know how I could ever endure such a thing. But all one can do is endure it.