Saving Sarah Cain

2007
6.1| 1h43m| PG| en
Details

When Sarah Cain, a self-involved big-city newspaper columnist, travels to Pennsylvania for the funeral of her Amish sister, she soon discovers that she is the legal guardian of her five Amish nieces and nephews. Rather than choose to move to Lancaster County to finish raising them there herself, or let them be separated by the foster care system, Sarah decides to take them with her back to Portland where she believes she can make a new life for them. However, she soon realizes that the modern world has forced them to compromise who they are, and that she has moved them there for all the wrong reasons - a motive which is soon exposed - because secrets can really never be kept secret. In order to find her own redemption, she knows she must make a choice to give them back their lives in Amish Country. And whether she remains part of their lives will have a lot to do with how much she has grown to love them.

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Also starring Lisa Pepper

Reviews

GrimPrecise I'll tell you why so serious
ChicDragon It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.
Married Baby Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?
Skyler Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.
lstrom Do family films have to be devoid of edge and energy? This rather bloodless, tepid story should have been good. Even with an interesting concept, the story line has no surprises or revelations, and from time to time makes no sense. The main character and her boyfriend have zero, and I mean ZERO chemistry. Elliot Gould has the newspaper editor she works for is wasted, with some ploddingly delivered lines that might have been brighter had it not seemed as though everyone's dialog was delivered very slowly on purpose. The charming kid actors struggle to bring something believable to the boring dialog and for the most part do the best job of making the film watchable. The omnipresent and cliché score got on my nerves, never letting the story tell itself. This is worth watching, though, for the utterly breathtaking look of the film, especially the Amish farms in winter. Every frame is painterly and perfectly composed.
gj13us It's not a bad movie, and is rather touching. Definitely sends the 'right' message for young people and families.I live in Lancaster, PA. This movie is so full of inaccuracies about the Amish that I can't give it a full recommendation. Please don't watch this and assume you've learned about the Amish and their way of life.We laughed when we heard the Amish 'elder' speaking--Amish don't have German accents! And Amish bonnets don't look like that. I could go on.Suffice to say, the Amish aren't at all as innocent of our way of life as we'd like to believe them to be.
newsview This comment is an attempt to balance out a "review" that broad brushed the acting in "Saving Sarah Cain" as wooden, the situations unrealistic, and the movie nothing more than sappy and clichéd. There was no sense of giving the reader the pros and cons to this film. As such, the author's "take" on the film had more to say about his or her film preferences than it did about the merits of the film itself. While the premise of "Saving Sarah Cain" is somewhat of a stretch — relocating orphaned Amish children to a big city in order to live with an "English outsider" — the film is nevertheless intriguing and heartwarming. To read such harsh criticism, however, one has to wonder if there some "rule" that says a good movie must be dark, depraved, brash, violent, sardonic or just plain jaded? If these harsh criticisms had been applied to yet another romantic comedy, I would say that the man-meets-woman premise has been milked to death and probably does deserve some of those criticisms. However, "Saving Sarah Cain" is not at all shallow, shows no disrespect or flippancy toward Amish culture, and the subject matter itself is not at all overdone. The acting on the part of the Amish children's characters was sensitive and convincing to the point of wondering if they somehow WERE drawn from among the Amish (or had lived among them in order to become true to their mannerisms). In addition, the situations and the psychological reactions to them were portrayed well enough to make the characters believable, though it is, in fact, based upon a work of fiction.It would seem that the review presently leading the pack for this film advanced the idea that a "real movie" cannot be touching. However, I would say that sentimentality is not the problem. To the contrary, it is much harder to portray that which is innocent, earnest, restrained, modest or pure than it is to portray the hardened, jaded, disturbed, dysfunctional or brash characters that many dramas either call for. Of course, we're not living in the Silver Screen era, so it should be no surprise that this sort of movie — the director, script and its actors — would draw criticism from those who think there's only one way to make a decent movie: the way everyone else is doing it. I cannot name one film or work of fiction that does not follow a protagonist/antagonist formula, so the "cliché" criticism in the prior review is nothing more than a Red Herring. In conclusion, if films that focus on an uplifting ending and steer clear of violence and stereotypical subjects and characters do not appeal, don't blame the director. Blame it on the fact that NO such movie is one's cup of tea. You'll never see me write a horror movie review because I would not do the subtleties of the horror genre justice. Likewise, I do not wish to read another review written by someone who obviously doesn't "get" the audience to whom "Saving Sarah Cain" is directed. There are some people who like to post reviews simply because they are contrarians and are under the impression that intellectual and artistic prowess must be demonstrated via criticism. The art is never good enough. The wine is never good enough. The films are never good enough. You get the idea… Ignore them. "Saving Sarah Cain" gets my vote for a movie well worth watching.
Mama Campbell x6 It was a little predictable, and sappy, but I found it to be gentle and easy to watch. I say 'easy' because it did not have heavy topics or scenes that could make you uncomfortable, especially if you were watching it with a child. Michael Landon, Jr. directs this film in a style similar to his fathers. He is careful when shooting the office 'tart' so that we get the idea without really having to 'see' everything. I especially enjoyed the shots of the Amish families ... I would have liked to see more of that. If you are a fan of Beverly Lewis then you will love this movie. The only thing that I didn't find real was the relationship between Sarah and her boyfriend. At one point he seems upset with her taking on the children but then he seems later to be for it and yet I did not see a transition into that.