Blake Rivera
If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.
krocheav
Award winning writer/director James Lapine pulls out all stops with this full on study of the US Family Law Court: its employees, several various related services, & families involved with some of its outcomes. This quite powerful production has the look of a made for Cinema feature that went straight to TV. Performances are first class, as is the cinematography and music score. Lapine has included many story elements (too many perhaps?) giving it the feel of a pilot for yet another upcoming endless series (thank heavens it was all wrapped up in a feature) & while there are unresolved situations, we know enough to fill in the spaces. Good looking and absorbing - can recommend 'Custody' for any lover of dramatic studies that deal with contemporary social issues.
mharah
On the one hand, it is good to see Lifetime showcasing more quality material. Several years ago, a movie such as "Custody" would have been a rarity on Lifetime. On the other hand, this movie tried to do too much in an hour and three-quarters. There wasn't enough time to deal with the personal issues, so the legal issues got skimmed over lightly. Reviewer Da Rude makes some good points (although rather incoherent, unfortunately). The United States film industry is so fragmented right now. Too many people making ill-considered decisions that affect the quality of the final product. If "Custody" was conceived as the multi-part project which it should have been, the various themes and story lines could have been given the treatment they should have had. As it is, they weren't. Reviewer Da Rude, a resident of London, seems to have problems with US movies. Too bad, but he's right about this: The US film industry is going through a lot of turmoil right now. It has happened before, and the results have always been stronger output in the end. As far as "Custody" is concerned, Lifetime needs to be encouraged to press forward with the quality material, most particularly with quality actors such as Viola Davis. Having first-rate actors such as Ellen Burstyn, Patricia Kalember and Tony Shalhoub doing smaller roles needs to be seen in a positive light for TV movies. (The broadcast networks gave up on them years ago; reality shows and a LOT of American football have, sadly, pushed them aside.) "Custody" must be evaluated for the good direction it is taking. We need more such efforts.
edwagreen
Outstanding film showcasing the interpersonal relationships of people working and involved in family court regarding children.Everyone here from the judge to the defendant has his own personal story of woe; however, we do rise above a Peyton Place mentality.As the judge, Viola Davis turns in a great performance in finding out about her unfaithful husband and thinking back to the brother she lost from a heroine overdose.We see the shortcomings of the ACS agency with their delays, foul-ups and sometimes tragedy ensuing.We see a brand new lawyer assigned to a case where a mother disciplining her child is thought to have abused the child. We see what this mother has to go through in court due to legal hang-ups and a system stretched to the limit.Nothing is sugar-coated here including the ending.
mgconlan-1
Two nights ago I watched an especially compelling movie on Lifetime: "Custody," which they identified as a "Premiere" (not a "World Premiere"!) even though, judging from the stellar names both in front of and behind the camera — Viola Davis and Hayden Panettiere are the writers and the writer/director is James Lapine, best known for writing the books for Stephen Sondheim's musicals "Sunday in the Park with George," "Into the Woods" and "Passion" — and also from the frequent blipping of swear words, I assume this film was intended for theatrical release. Sara Diaz (Catalina Sandino Moreno) is a single mother with two kids, son David (Jaden Michael) and daughter Tia (Bryce Lorenzo — a girl named Bryce?). When David comes to school with bruises that indicate his mom may have abused him, the school calls New York's Child Protective Services department, who immediately take both David and Tia away from Sara and schedule her for a hearing in family court either to set conditions for their return or remove them permanently. Sara is not surprisingly totally freaked out by this, especially when she ends up in the courtroom of formidable Judge Martha Schulman (Viola Davis) and a blonde woman from an upper-class background, Alexandra "Ally" Fisher (Hayden Panettiere), is appointed to be her attorney. Judge Schulman is conducting the hearing at such a rapid pace that Ally has to take the case without knowing the slightest thing about what it is, let alone having a chance to confer with her client in advance. The young, naïve 25-year- old lawyer is up against no fewer than three people on the other side: a woman counsel appointed as a guardian ad litem to represent the best interest of the kids; Santoro (Raúl Esparza from the current cast of "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit," playing essentially the same character, a relentless prosecutor), representing Child Protective Services; and Keith Denholz (Dan Fogler), representing New York City's office of corporate counsel (essentially their version of a city attorney) and if anything even more determined to take Sara's kids away from her than Santoro is. (He's also got the hots for Ally and makes a series of embarrassingly crude passes at her.)Santoro is especially up against it because on the last case he worked, he recommended returning a 5-year-old to the mother as she was coming out of drug rehab — only mom relapsed almost immediately, left the kid alone at home while she went out to "party," and the child died of starvation. So he's clearly bending over backwards to give Sara a hard time next she and her children be the next black mark on her résumé. As for Keith, he keeps springing surprise documents on the court, including a revelation that Sara has a criminal record for drug possession — her ex-husband Shawn (Sharrieff Pugh), father of David and Tia, was a drug dealer and smuggler who's currently serving a prison sentence, though he hid one of his drug shipments in Tia's diaper bag and that got Sara charged with being part of his drug operation. The charges were eventually dropped but they weren't expunged from her record, and Keith dredges them up again. Judge Schulman recommends that Sara get tested for drugs, and Ally assures her, "That's only to make sure you're not using cocaine or heroin" — only the test turns out positive, not for cocaine and heroin but for marijuana and PCP (Sara was with friends and family when they passed around a PCP-laced joint and she took a hit, then agreed to the drug test because she didn't realize, and Ally didn't tell her, it was for pot as well), and Keith drops that as yet another bombshell to keep Sara for getting her kids. Sara's biggest obstacle is her hair-trigger temper (that should be a lesson for me!) that causes her to blow up in court — when she finally admits that she struck her son in anger because he wouldn't behave, we believe it — and at one point Judge Schulman orders her into anger management classes.What's most fascinating about this movie is how it counterpoints the main plot with the family dysfunctions of the characters around them: the gimmick is that just about everyone in the court system charged with making decisions about Sara and whether she's a fit parent for her kids has their own family problems. Aside from the marvelous irony that all these authority figures are trying to tell Sara how to raise her kids when their own family lives are falling apart, "Custody" is a good illustration of mystery writer and former child protective services worker Abigail Padgett's comment to me that never, if you can possibly avoid it, allow yourself or your children to be caught up in these sorts of systems because the systems have their own priorities, and those aren't likely to be yours. "Custody" has been criticized for its plethora of plot lines — though I found that for once a movie or TV show with multiple plot lines used those strands to reinforce each other and add to the dramatic point, not just to confuse people or seem like they're being "post-modern." It's an excellent movie and one which should have got a theatrical release; it also ran 2 ½ hours less commercials, not Lifetime's standard two hours, which had me worrying that they were going to make it part one of a serial (or, even worse, the pilot for a series — it wasn't at all clear from the promos Lifetime ran for it whether it was a stand-alone film or a TV series), but no-o-o-o-o, it was a stand-alone TV-movie with a satisfying if a not altogether happy ending, and it was very much worth watching and several cuts above the Lifetime norm.
