Lovely & Amazing Film Review

Lovely and Amazing is a film about a Caucasian mother with two adult daughters and one adopted pre-teen daughter who is African American. Each female deals with their own personal insecurities throughout the film. The mother, in an effort to feel younger and more attractive, gets a liposuction which nearly risks her life. She looks to the doctor to feel beautiful and wanted, but he does not reciprocate her advances. The daughter who is an actress does not feel beautiful because she continually finds herself in the supporting role next to the beautiful lead actress. She is insecure in that she feels that she is not sexy or seductive enough and looks to a male actor’s sexual advances as a validation of her beauty.

The married daughter wants to pursue a career in making crafts, but her husband is not supportive since they are only losing money with her hobby. Feeling unsupported by her husband, she gets a job at a one hour photo development store where she gains attention from her 17 year old boss and they become intimate. Instead of looking for attention and comfort from her husband, she maintains a relationship with her boss only to end up in jail for rape. Annie, in an effort to be like her adopted family, has troubles adjusting to all the differences that they have. She even goes to the extreme of straightening her hair without consent.
This film deals with a lot of body image issues that we have discussed throughout the course from cosmetic surgery to what is beautiful. I did like the film because it constantly had you wondering what they were going to deal with next. If it wasn’t one thing, it was always another and you just were hoping that it would all work out in the end. I did feel that the movie didn’t really end. It left you to make up your own conclusions of what became of them. That is my only problem; I felt I needed a conclusion.

In the beginning of the film, I felt the married daughter was rude and she was neglecting the adopted daughter when she was taking care of her because her mother was in the hospital. The part where they say that she doesn’t need sunscreen bugged me because her skin still needs to be protected. It was like instead of putting her in the Big/Little Sister program, I felt that they should have educated themselves about raising a black child. They should have put some braids and grease in her hair and she probably wouldn’t have felt the need to straighten her hair because it was a mess. Black and white are complete opposites, but there are similarities like moisturizing and protecting skin from UV rays.

The other issues in the film were surrounded around males. Each of the other women looked for men to validate them. It was just sad to see. The married woman’s situation was the worst because she just needed to have a civil conversation with her husband without the presence of their child. She was clearly unhappy with the lack of attention from her husband, and the first person to acknowledge her she grab held and didn’t let go. I could probably talk about these issues forever because it just bothers me so much. The low self-esteem of this family was just hereditary. Their insecurities were just so extreme.