A child’s death is inconceivable. But Mary Griffith didn’t have to imagine it; she lived it. When her son, Bobby, leaned backward off a bridge into oncoming traffic, taking his life at just 20, the fervent churchgoer’s perfect world tumbled head-first too.
With Sigourney Weaver at the gripping core of “Prayers for Bobby,” a true story shot over the summer in metro Detroit and premiering at 9 p.m. Jan. 24 on Lifetime, the tragic story of a son fighting for his mother’s acceptance – and the mother’s religious conflict to give it – remarkably escapes the doomed fate of TV movies.
Thanks to Weaver, who is bitterly cold, playing Griffith as someone who, when Bobby (impeccably played by Ryan Kelley of indie gem “Mean Creek”) comes out, pretends he’s a stranger and dismisses him as casually as a foe. “I won’t have a gay son,” she lashes out moments before the expected climax – Bobby’s death, the instrument that makes Griffith re-examine her faith.
As it should. But before undergoing her transformation, Mary’s all-American family, living in California during the ’80s, is caught dealing with Bobby’s revelation. And their picture-perfect six-some – achieved by an opening home-video of their smiley, happy kin frolicking in the yard – is pulverized. Divided, too.
While most of the family is empathetic to Bobby, they’re mostly resistant to speaking up to Mary, who becomes increasingly frustrated, but still unflappable, when prayer and hanging with the boys doesn’t seem to beget the flip-flop she wants. Or needs, rather, if she wants to, as she says, see the family together in the afterlife.
She goes to crazy extremes, trying to help Bobby rid himself of what she thinks is a mental disorder, to fight for her own self-deluded yearnings. She demands Bobby not stand with his hand on his hip – “like a girl,” she says. She sets him up on dates with chicks. All of it’s done out of love and desperation, and especially fear, and Weaver plays Griffith with such unwavering conviction, that she remarkably builds a sympathetic bond with us. We know she’s off her rocker, but we’re still rooting for her to change.
Her wake-up call, unfortunately, comes too late. And when it does, Mary falls into an abyss of remorse, sinking deeper with each new misunderstood journal entry she reads from Bobby’s diary. And she takes us down with her.
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