That was an excellent one.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

***MAJOR SPOILER ALERT*** Having the court rule against him, in his child custody case, Quinn Halloran decides to disappear together with his four year old son Mark into total oblivion. The two end up lost in the teeth of a vicious Pacific Tsunami off the California coast. Kristen the worried mother of Mark gets the terrible news that both her husband Quinn and four year old son Mark have gone under the waves never to be seen or heard from again.It's now some 14 years later when viewing a video tape of her friends vacationing in the Caribbean that Kristen notice something very unusual. On the video tape there's this strapping young boy and his dad operating the boat that Kristen's friends were sailing on. The two sailors were Mark, now 18, and his dad Quinn Halloran!Desperately trying to track down her long lost son, if in fact that's who he is, Kristen goes so far as to risk being arrested by faking a lost passport in order to get on the island, Saint Alicia. It's there that both Mark and Quinn are supposed to be living and working as tourist guides,in operating a sail boat, on.Finally tracking down Mark, who's known on the island as Matthew Williams, and getting him to give her a boat ride, to see the sights of Saint Alicia, Kristine is now more then certain that he's the son she supposedly lost at sea some 14 years ago. It's Matthew's father known affectingly by everyone on Saint Alicia as Captain John who, after Matthew told him about his encounter with Kristen, smells a rat, or barracuda, and starts sweating bullets. It's there and then that Captain John decides to check out and take off for Porto Rico with a now bewildered and confused Matthew!***SPOILER ALERT*** We as well as Kristen soon realize that both Matthew and his sweating and nose twitching, from an obvious nervous condition, dad are the real McCoy: Mark and Quinn Hallaran. This has a now cornered Quinn, or better yet Captain John, make a run for it, with an escape to Porto Rico now out of the question, before the long arm of the law finally catches up with him. Captain John is now, with the cat out of the bag, wanted for a whole slew of crimes that includes kidnapping passport violations and using a false name on his both car and boat licenses.It was at first that Kristen was in trouble of getting thrown in jail and deported for trying illegally to get on the island in order to find her long lost son. But as it soon turned out Captain John in him being either so guilt ridden or just plain whacked out, on bottles of over 100% proof of the islands home made rum, who was now the most wanted man, or woman, on the island if not the entire Caribbean!With the plus 4 category Hurricane Edwardo bearing down on Saint Alcia Captain John and his boy Matthew, who's still in a state of confusion, decide to make a B-line towards Salt Cay that's right straight dab in the path of rampaging hurricane. This has Kristen who had since learned to operate a motor boat, by non other then Matthew, to get to Salt Cay first! It's there in the swirling winds sands and ocean waves that she'll finally confront her good for nothing husband and get back from him what's so, by a unanimous decision of the L.A family court, rightfully hers: Kristen's long lost son Mark, or now Matthew, that Quinn or in his latest incarnation Captain John took away from her!

can anyone tell me the kind, type, or model of cabin cruiser boat owned by Craawford and his father in this movie??? It was the power boat that the son was on when the mother first contacted him. It was the boat the he used for "charters". Now i am just trying to fill up the ten line requirement for a posting This boat may be called a cabin cruiser or it may be called something else. Please respond to robertsimmons47@yahoo.com thank you.The boat was big enough for a person to walk into standing up. The 3 of them were on the boat at the end of the movie. It had windows around the sides so you could see out .

Gabrielle Anwar is luminous. It was not at all surprising that she had men all over the place either sweet-talking her or bending the rules for her. The young man who played Mark/Matthew made me wish I was about 25 years younger than I am! (grin)But still... come on. I'll grant you that it would not be easy to wait a few weeks to get a passport before going to see your son, but the travel agent told her she would probably be detained and possibly deported back the U.S., in which case she would be right back where she started. And if she's so good at getting people to bend the rules for her, why didn't she contact whoever about getting the passport, explain her story, and try to get the process expedited? This was a plot device tossed in to the story to keep it from being about half an hour long, and the writer surely could have found *something* more believable!And what is Kristine's problem with telling the truth? Why didn't she tell her story to the official at the immigration office once she arrived on the island without a passport? Why lie to him about losing her passport? And for that matter, why did he believe her? I don't know about anyone else, but I don't usually travel with a copy of my birth certificate in my purse. If she lost her passport on the plane, why would she have her birth certificate right there with her, and why didn't the immigration official question her about it? Same thing with the local police officer -- same lie and same problematic paperwork.Speaking of the police officer, what's up with him telling Kristine "names and numbers -- I'm on it" as if he plans to investigate Quinn, then turning around and calling Quinn to joke with him about "this crazy American?" Another silly plot device to keep Kristine from going straight to Matthew to tell him, I suppose, since he told her it would impede his "investigation."Finally at the end of the movie, as the three main characters sit in boats anchored at a salt flat with a hurricane approaching, Quinn (and the screenwriter) can't seem to figure out what he should do. One minute he's saying they can't go back to the island because "they're looking for me." He intends to make a run for it, and take Kristine and Matthew with him. A moment later, he has apparently remembered there's a hurricane on the way and calls the rescue helicopter, giving them his location, so he, Kristine, and Matthew can be picked up -- says he wants to do his time on this island rather than rotting in jail in Haiti, and he doesn't want Matthew or Kristine to get hurt. (This from the man who told his son his mother was dead, and let the mother believe her son was dead. But he doesn't want them to get hurt.) Another moment later, Kristine suggests he take the zodiac and get away, and he agrees, thereby making her (and presumably Matthew) an accessory to his escape from the law. (But he doesn't want them to get hurt.)It's not a terrible movie, but it's also not one I would watch again.

Gabrielle Anwar is Karen, a woman who believes her son and husband to be dead for the past 14 years - until she sees a young man and her husband in a vacation video. "The Long Lost Son" is about a woman who will not be stopped from going to the resort location and tracking down her child.This film was a real tour de force for Anwar, who gives a beautiful performance as the mother. The scene where she hears on the answering machine that the search at sea for her husband and child will have to be abandoned is amazing. So upset that she is unable to walk, she doubles over and leans on furniture to get across the room, where she completely collapses. All of her physical mannerisms and emotions rang true throughout.In order to give the character more obstacles, however, the writer added a plot hole - Karen buys her ticket for this island, but she has no passport. The travel agent suggests that she bring her birth certificate and driver's license. Uh, this is 2006. She brings a birth certificate that's not even an official copy. Anyone who has ever traveled to a foreign country knows that if you have a ticket, you can be issued a passport immediately. Naturally she runs into trouble when she arrives and her story about her husband is not believed as he is well-liked on the island and a friend of the police chief's.I had one other problem with this film, and that is, with Karen's son missing for 14 years, how could she have recognized him so readily? In real life, when the police thought they had found Eton Patz some years after he was kidnapped, the parents broke down when the saw the recent photo because they weren't sure that was their son. And look at Princess Anastasia. It's obviously not so easy. In this case, I bought it because I went with the mystical connection between mother and child - but really, if she had seen her husband on the video first, being suspicious about the young man would have made more sense.What makes this film above average is Anwar's performance and seeing a new actor, Chace Crawford, who plays Matthew/Mark, the son. He brought a naturalness and warmth to his role - and it doesn't hurt that he's a major hunk. You'll be seeing a lot of him.