Callie and Son - 1981

Callie and Son starts like it's going to be a girl-gave-her-kid-up-for-adoption drama.  In the first few minutes, we meet Callie who is giving birth to a son, a son from a never-mentioned father, and when she gives birth she signs papers and gives him away legally.

What spins out from this beginning was unexpected, not entirely in a good or bad way.  Reason number one is that it is 2 hours and 15 minutes.  I'm going to guess right now that this was based on a book.  A long, long book.

Where to start with this?  It's a relatively simple story actually.  Callie goes through hardships as a single woman rebuilding her life, puts herself into school, meets a newspaper mogul and eventually marries him, gets reunited with her son when he is probably about 7 or so, her husband dies, life changes, her son grows up, her son experiences difficulty with jobs, writes a scathing article about politics which gets him into politics, he gets married to arguably the wrong girl, problems are had, and eventually the last few moments of the movie are about what end up happening with the relationship.

Spoilers I guess, just for completion sake.  Callie's son Randall had married this girl who seduced him.  Callie herself doesn't "approve" of this girl, especially when it turns out the girl has a troubled past involving pornography and blackmail.  Eventually when she's really drunk, the new wife unleashes her rage on Callie.  New wife has a gun, which Callie wrestles away from her, and shoots the girl in the face!  What the fuck!  Then, we have a courtroom drama in the last 25 minutes as the son, Randall, goes on trial for murder.

I really did not see the plot of this one coming at all, and I have to say it was both really good at times, and incredibly tedious at others.  The movie suffers from a TON of story, and at times the part you're watching truly won't matter.  However, if you look at it through the lens of a dramatic "life story" type of movie, well then it needs to have all those parts.

The only thing I wished was, with the end, they had a tacked on a rather confusing little bit where it seems Callie adopts another boy?  I was confused and frankly irritated at that.  Also, a strange and rather uncomfortable possible incest angle that I didn't need.

All in all though, wow.  What the fuck.  Giant, sprawling epics was never something I would have wanted or guessed the boxset had.  I really hope there's no more of these.  A couple of the remaining 7-8 movies sound like real slogs, which is why I've slowed down, and I don't know if I can manage another over 2 hour epic.  Aw god.  Either way, this is pretty good, despite my complaining, and I give it a 2.5.