Way Off the Deep End By Stephen Hunter Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, March 12, 1999

Michelle Pfeiffer stars in "The Deep End of the Ocean." (Mandalay Entertainment) Director: Ulu Grosbard Cast: Michelle Pfeiffer; Treat Williams; Whoopi Goldberg; Jonathan Jackson; Ryan Merriman Running Time: 1 hour, 45 minutes Emotional intensity

Everybody doesn't like something but nobody doesn't like Michelle Pfeiffer.

It turns out that "Everybody" encompasses not merely the world and Hollywood and probably China, but also God. The movie is about how he is so upset at her character's unhappiness that he violates his own rules of probability by allowing this beautiful lady to discover that a son missing nine years lives . . . two blocks away! What are the odds on that, yet so inevitable does it seem that no one in the movie even says "Unbelievable!"

I give away this plot twist – which happens at the one-third mark – because the TV commercials do. The larger point is that God obviously has nothing better to do than restore order to the universe by restoring that twinkle to Pfeiffer's eyes. And we can all be thankful. Who cares about Rwanda? If a woman as beautiful as Michelle Pfeiffer isn't happy, then what hope is there for the rest of us? I feel much better already.

The movie is derived from a best-selling novel by Jacquelyn Mitchard and directed, under Pfeiffer's guidance, by Ulu Grosbard, whose job on the set appears to be to ask the key question "How high?" when Pfeiffer decided she wanted to see him jump.

Pfeiffer plays Beth Cappadora, a photographer in Madison, Wis., and harried mother of three, who decides to take the kids with her to a Chicago high school reunion. She lets the two boys – 7 and 3 – stand alone in a crowded hotel lobby while she registers, and when she returns five minutes later, the younger, Ben, is missing. So upset is the world at Pfeiffer's grief that "The Mystery of Ben" turns up on the cover of People magazine the next week. I suspect this would indeed happen if such a tragedy were to (God forbid!) befall Pfeiffer, but as thousands and thousands of kids go missing each year, it strikes me as a little absurd for People to put one of Beth's missing kids on the cover.

The movie then offers Pfeiffer many splendid acting opportunities – grief, anger, guilt, breakdown, resentment, all big primary colors in the emotional spectrum – and she tears into them like you wouldn't believe. I am an ACTRESS, you almost hear her saying, how dare you stare at my wide perfect cheekbones, my depthless azure eyes, the incredible elegance of my carriage, the swanlike length of my neck, the perfection of my pale, dewy skin, the wonderful way my hair sort of rumples and how it always looks better a little messy, you know, rather than too fussed over, or my . . .

But as wondrous as is Pfeiffer, the movie is quite unpleasant in an icky way. You feel the exploitation of the soul-deep pain of the lost child hovering over it, and that's a clammy feeling; it's too easy to put a kid in jeopardy, to jack a twitch of agony out of anyone who is either a parent or a child or knows a parent or a child.

Worse, it has the overwhelming stench of a film afflicted by star ego. The kidnapping of the child, somehow, is all about the pain of the mother and, really, the dexterity of the actress. And if she's allowed to seem irrational, her behavior is always rationalized. The actual villain of the piece is her hearty, responsible husband, Pat (Treat Williams), who runs the family, supports the household and sustains her emotionally while she's locked up in her room, acting. But he's not with her on her journey to self-discovery, which is the true subject of the film as it heads toward the movie wonderland of happyhappyhappy, and so of course he must be punished. He doesn't "grow"; she does, that's her triumph.

As for her idiocy in LEAVING THE KIDS ALONE IN THE BIG CITY, somehow that issue is never fully addressed. No one ever says to her "YOU UTTER MORON YOU IDIOT YOU STUPID JERK YOU IRRESPONSIBLE FOOL!" because of course everyone knows you can't address Michelle Pfeiffer that way. Michelle Pfeiffer is never wrong, which is exactly what is wrong with "The Deep End of the Ocean."