The Other Child
Barry Huntoon (Tony Denison) and wife Laura (Cheryl Ladd) have a happy marriage and a growing family, but something has troubled Barry for the past 13 years as when he was serving in Vietnam he fell in love and got a young woman pregnant but had to leave her there. Now whilst browsing through a magazine he sees a picture of a young girl, Mai (Melissa Chan) and he is convinced she is his daughter. After pulling some strings the young girl is allowed to enter the country. That is just the start of the problems as with Mai (Melissa Chan) moving in with them and not use to the culture it starts to cause a wedge between Barry and Laura.
"The Girl Who Came Between Them" is one of those movies which is pretty self explanatory once you know the basis that we have a married father bringing home the daughter he fathered from before the marriage when he was stationed in Vietnam. Right from there we know there will be cultural issues especially early on when the language differences cause a barrier. But you also know that Barry's feelings of guilt and need to do right by Mai ends up causing others to feel abandoned and that in turn leads to arguments and so on. Some of it is good such as when Mai tries cereal for the first it is so different to the food she is use to she is sick. But it is pretty obvious from beginning to end.
The thing is that whilst director Mel Damski does a good job of exploring issues and both Tony Denison and Cheryl Ladd do a nice job of showing the problems which occur in their relationship there is nothing else. And the trouble is I wanted something more, I needed something other than the obvious ramifications of this daughter causing issues in an already settled family.
What this all boils down to is that "The Girl Who Came Between Them" is a good drama and a well acted one but there is not enough meat on the bones to make the drama last a whole 100 minutes and after the set up is in place and the issues start to form you long for something more to come along.
