Dear Frankie - Movie

This past weekend I finally had a chance to go to the movies. I tagged along with a group of friends who were seeing Dear Frankie. Now, just from the previews I was not terribly interested in watching this movie, but I figure I could tolerate it with good company.

Dear Frankie is about a single mother and her deaf son, Frankie, on the run from her abusive husband. The boy doesn’t know that his real father was like that but thinks he’s a sailor on a freighter ship. This is due in a very large part to his mother who has been writing her son posing as the father.

The mother’s mendacity comes initially from a somewhat twisted sense of love for her son, but we learn that the letters were more for her benefit than for her son. This is only one of the perplexing parts about the film that the director never develops fully. In fact, there are several plot holes and story inconsistencies that leaves you feeling less than satisfied at the end. For example, there is obviously a budding relationship between the mother and the stranger she hires to impersonate the father. The stranger (we never find out his real name) is bold enough to request another day with Frankie and the mother, but never pursue the relationship any further than a kiss goodbye. That brings up the whole issue of the stranger in the first place. If the mother truly wants to protect her son wouldn’t the truth be safer than finding a strange man to play the father?

The one part of the film that actually satisfied me was the resolution of the mother's lying to her son, even though it was resolved with the biggest plot hole in the movie. (Don’t read any further if you don’t want to know what happens). The son, through sheer magic knows that the stranger was not his father. The audience is never told how the boy finds out, but by the boy knowing that his mother made up the story it doesn’t justify her actions in the lest. I felt the movie was leaning towards justifying the mother’s action, but in the end, without being judgmental, the movie resolves that issue and kind-of-sort leaves a happy ending.

All in all I would suggest waiting for the video. It’s definitely a Hallmark Made-for-TV presentation, and that’s probably were they should have stuck it.