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Home Subscribe About Us Features News Album Reviews Movie Reviews Past Movies Movie Resources Concert Reviews Book Reviews Top 10 Contact Us	Saving Sarah Cain (DVD) Stars: Lisa Pepper, Tess Harper, Elliott Gould, Tom Tate, Abigail Mason, Soren Fulton, Jennifer O’Dell, Danielle Churchran, Tanner Maguire, Bailee Maidson and David Clennon Director: Michael Landon, Jr. Scriptwriters: Brian Bird and Cindy Kelley (based on the book “The Redemption of Sarah Cain” by Beverly Lewis) Composer: Mark McKenzie 20th Century Fox/Believe Pictures Rating: PG Running Length: 103 minutes Saving Sarah Cain is a film about love and how it can come in all shapes, sizes and ages. Also, it is about opening yourself to love and discovering a completely different world. Beverly Lewis’s book, The Redemption of Sarah Cain has been adapted for the screen, starring Lisa Pepper as Sarah, Elliot Gould as her newspaper boss (think the newspaper attitude from the “Spider-Man” films) and Tom Tate as her patient boyfriend. Michael Landon, Jr.’s direction allows the story to flow from the big city to Amish country and the photography is luminous. Mark McKinzie’s soundtrack could stand alone. As the story begins, Sarah is a newspaper columnist in Portland, Ore. who has writer’s block. Her syndicated material has gone from hundreds of newspapers to two. Elliot Gould is an impatient editor who likes Sarah, but demands work or else her space goes to an attractive, female rival. No pressure there. At the time that Sarah meets her boyfriend for lunch, she gets a phone call telling her of the death of her estranged sister, Ivy. The sister had married and joined the Amish community years ago. She has five children ranging in age from eight to sixteen. The husband is also dead, so when Sarah travels to Pennsylvania for the funeral, she finds she is the sole guardian of the children. There are several options, including leaving the kids in their setting, but Sarah decides to bring them to Portland. The middle part of the film is about the kids trying to fit in. Actually, they are making a go of it, including one of the boys on a wrestling team, the younger sister having friends, and the middle sister secretly changing clothes to fit in. All this comes at a cost, and the kids are learning to lie. Everything comes to a head when the kids discover that Aunt Sarah has been writing about them in her column, which is now a top seller and widely syndicated. What a let-down. Besides, this, the boyfriend says he is disappointed in Sarah, who crossed privacy boundaries. What to do? _Saving Sarah Cain_ is a warm film and the soundtrack and photography certainly help. Lisa Pepper’s Sarah looks so much like Jennifer Aniston I had to look twice the first time she came on screen. Lisa doesn’t have a wide range of emotion here, as compared to the kids who steal every scene they are in. I guess in that aspect, Lisa does fine. Tess Harper has a star billing, but it is really a cameo as she plays an Amish neighbor who would take responsibility for the children. Humor is provided by situations such as the first time Amish boys see a sports car like Sarah's. The movie is fanciful in that even the middle-schoolers are polite, Sarah doesn’t know clothes from her closet are missing from time to time, the boyfriend is way too patient and how does she get so much power from her laptop when there is no electricity in the Amish farmhouse. Batteries really last that long? In spite of the above, I found Saving Sarah Cain to be a good family film that shows families gathering for prayer, trying to keep their values, families that do stay together and an interesting study of an Amish neighborhood. Copyright 2008 Marie Asner Submitted 1/16/08