Penny Marshall

A single mother, with dreams of becoming a writer, has a son at the age of 15 in 1965, and goes through a failed marriage with the drug-addicted father. Seriocomic story based on the memoir by Beverly Donofrio, the movie follows a young woman who finds her life radically altered by an event from her teen years. Born in 1950, Beverly grew up bright and ambitious in a working-class neighborhood in Connecticut; her father was a tough but good-hearted cop who listened to his daughter's problems, and her mother was a nervous woman eager to imagine the worst. From an early age, Beverly displays a keen intelligence and an interest in literature, and dreams of going to college in New York and becoming a writer. However, she also develops an early interest in boys, and at 15 finds herself madly in love with a boy from her high school. However, an attempt to get his attention leads to an embarassing incident at a party, and Ray, a sweet but thick-headed 18-year-old, steps forward to defend her. Beverly and Ray end up making out, and after one thing leads to another, Beverly discovers she's pregnant. Telling Ray is only marginally less difficult than informing her parents, and at 16, Beverly is a wife and mother. Against the odds, Beverly is determined to still finish high school and go on to college, but that goal becomes more difficult with time, especially after Beverly's marriage begins to fall apart. Ray tries to do the right thing but has trouble holding a job, and becomes addicted to heroin.

Jimmy, a washed-up ballplayer, is hired to coach in the All-American Girls Baseball League of 1943 and is drawn back into the game by the heart and heroics of his all-girl team.

Dr. Sayer is a pioneering neurologist who wants to take a risk and give his patients who suffer from encephalitis a drug used for Parkinson's Disease. He tries it out on one man who miraculously wakes from his perpetual catatonic state. 1969. Dr. Malcolm Sayer is hired as a clinical physician at a local hospital in the Bronx, despite only having a research background. The job is not ideal on his side as he has difficulties relating to people which is the reason he has focused on research projects not involving human subjects, while the hospital hires him somewhat out of desperation in not finding anyone else with the qualifications who wants the job. Most of his patients are in a semi-catatonic state and are housed no in what some of the orderlies coin the "garden" ward, where all they can do for the patients is water and feed them. He notices that some of the patients, despite their generally catatonic state, respond in unusual ways to certain stimuli. In doing some research, he also finds that some common bonds between these patients are that they suffered from encephalitis in the 1920s or 1930s, and that their physical states are like they have Parkinson's disease frozen in time. As such, he is able to convince, albeit reluctantly, his skeptical boss, Dr. Kaufman, to administer an expensive experimental drug therapy on only one patient with family consent. That patient is forty-one year old Leonard Lowe, who has been in his current state since he was eleven years old, and who has been supported by his loving mother through all these years. As the drug therapy "awakens" Leonard, there are several issues that come into play. Malcolm has to try and convince Kaufman and the hospital administration to extend the therapy to the other patients. Despite not knowing the long term effects, Leonard, who was aware of his surroundings through his catatonic state, may have mixed emotions about his situation, wanting both to be treated as human being and an experiment guinea pig to ensure that what is happening benefits him and others in the long run. Mrs. Lowe may be unprepared for the new Leonard, she expecting who she remembers as a sweet eleven year old boy. Through all these issues, what may be the most illuminating issue for Malcolm is the need to stimulate the human spirit, including his own in dealing with people around him. —Huggo A new doctor finds himself with a ward full of catatonic patients. He is disturbed by them and the fact that they have been catatonic for decades with no hope of any cure. When he finds a possible chemical cure he gets permission to try it on one of them. When the first patient awakes, he is now in his 50s having gone into a catatonic state at 20 years of age. The film then delights in the new awareness of the patients and then on the reactions of their relatives to the changes in the newly awakened. —John Vogel <jlvogel@comcast.net>