http://www.baldwinent.com/prod_atlasshrugged.html

Bella starts off as an “isn’t it cool that we live in New York?” movie, as the two main characters aimlessly wander around the city, dealing with minor problems (his bottom-line obsessed brother fired him from his job in a restaurant, she has some kind of money issue or something) and meeting “colorful characters” along the way. Could these two lonely yet not entirely uncharming singles find love together?

No, because she’s pregnant and wants to get an abortion. Worse, he is so painfully earnest and wide-eyed, he can’t fathom anyone choosing abortion; he’s like a toddler finding out that mommy wants to kill his little sister before he gets to meet her. “But whhhhhyyyyyyy?!” His goal changes from getting into problem girl’s pants to protecting the life growing within her.

Fortunately, after she meets his equally earnest family in the suburbs and has some very serious “spiritual” conversations, she keeps the baby. Also, his brother has a change of heart, realizing family is more important than money, and re-hires him at the restaurant. Inexplicably, problem girl doesn’t just give her baby over to earnest man, she gives it to him and then stays entirely out-of-touch with him for about five years. This isn’t an anonymous adoption, so why act like it?

For the dramatic last scene, of course, when she gets to see her unusually beautiful and intelligent 5-year-old for the very first time (never abort, because your kid could have been good-looking), and instantly falls in love. How could she ever have thought about aborting this innocent fawn?

Certainly there could be a good pro-life movie, even one about a heroic man protecting a fetus from a wayward woman, but Bella is humorless, cliched, thoughless and divorced from reality.

That’s my theory why other distribution companies didn’t buy it.

Having won the People’s Choice Award at last year’s Toronto Film Festival, you’d think major Hollywood distribution companies would be crawling over one another for a crack at the film.

First of all, the People’s Choice Award is not much of an indicator of what a distributor thinks will sell (or is good). Second, “major distribution” companies is a category that I find ambiguous at best- since major studios are not, for the most part, distributors of anything they don’t own (whereas a “pickup” deal of an already-finished film is generally a licensing endeavour). And whether a deal with any distributor is attractive has just as much to do with the terms of the deal as the name of the company.

The whole thing seems not worth much of an argument though, when one is operating on the premise that films would be purchased or not on the basis of the bias of the distributors- the only thing the distributors are interested in is whether the film will bring in box office and how much money that will take to accomplish. Unless we’re talking about much more obscure distributors, some of whom have an interest in releasing films they think are good.