ANGEL BABY

Name: ANGEL BABY
Item: ANGEL BABY
Author: Review

“Love among the mentally unstable”

Family Content: -4 Intentional blasphemy, evil, gross immorality, and/or worldview problems. (To be avoided)

Entertainment Quality:

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

Credits →

What You Need To Know:

In ANGEL BABY, Harry meets Kate, and they fall in love. Despite troubled pasts, they decide to cohabit. At first it is domestic bliss, but their peace is shattered when Kate tells Harry she is pregnant. They are encouraged to see an obstetrician, but Kate, who is guided by astrology and psychic messages, is against the idea. Harry makes matters worse when he throws all their medication down the toilet, so as not to infuse the baby with chemicals. Without their drugs, Kate regresses into one psychotic episode after another, and Harry eventually has another nervous breakdown. They are separated, but Harry decides to rescue Kate from her mental hospital and escapes with her, leading to disastrous results.

The direction is visually striking with powerful emotional undertones. The film captures the heart-wrenching pain, the troubles and turmoil of the fragile lovers. Regrettably, the film has an occult plot device, using astrology and numerology to guide the lives of Kate and Harry. Graphic sexual scenes and full female and male nudity are also present.. The final outcome of Harry and Kate’s dilemma, when Harry takes matters into his own hands, presents the final tragedy of living ungodly lives.

Content:

(Ro, O, LLL, VVV, SSS, NNN, D, M) Romantic worldview focusing on romantic & sexual love with occult elements, involving psychic messages & numerology; 15 obscenities, 11 profanities & 10 vulgarities; implied sexual abuse, pregnant woman bleeding, suicide & attempted suicide; four graphic sexual scenes, pregnancy outside marriage, & a childbirth scene; full male & female nudity; smoking & substance abuse of medicinal drugs; and miscellaneous immorality including fleeing from a mental hospital.

More Detail:

Love stories come and go, mostly having the same elements: boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, and they face obstacles. Whether their love has a happy ending or not depends on the whims and fancies of the scriptwriter. In ANGEL BABY, Harry (John Lynch) sees Kate (Jacqueline McKenzie ) at the ‘clubhouse,’ a psychiatric outpatient facility, and feels the stirring of romance and passion. He follows her to a bus stand, and they get to know one another. They share sad tales of broken lives and form an emotional alliance. Kate tells Harry of her messages from her guardian angel, Astral, given to her through Wheel of Fortune puzzles. When she asks Astral for advice on Harry, the message on the TV program reads, “You are my special angel.”
Harry takes Kate home to meet his brother and his family. All goes well, even though Kate does not know how to use the silverware. At the end of the evening, Kate and Harry announce they are going to move in together. Despite the misgivings of those around them, they find an apartment whose number seems to match their beliefs in numerology. Domestic life is bliss at first. Harry finds a job as a computer programmer, and Kate earns the odd dollar by picking up laundry jobs.
When Kate announces that she is pregnant, Harry is stunned, but excited. They believe the baby is meant to be theirs, confirmed by Astral. Their doctors and counselors at the ‘clubhouse’ are concerned about the pregnancy, because Kate and Harry stubbornly refuse see an obstetrician. Harry, in his obsessive-compulsive state, flushes away all their medication. Kate spirals downward into depression, and Harry moves into another major psychotic breakdown. Harry watches the Wheel of Fortune, and gets a sign to rescue Kate out of a mental institution.
This movie is a wretchedly moving story of a couple whose love borders on desperation. John Lynch, as the besotted Harry, and Jacqueline McKenzie as the astrologically-attuned and free-spirited Kate. give powerful performances, vulnerable in their fragility. Without melodrama, they keep their characters in a perfectly balanced pitch as they walk the fine lines between normalcy and madness. Their relationship is doomed from the start, and their confusion is all the more sad because their love is so real. For the most part, the movie’s scenes are striking and visual, with emotive subtext in their images.
However, the film does not take a moral stand, stressing instead the sexuality of Harry and Kate’s love. Questions about their live-in arrangement and Kate’s pregnancy focus solely on the issue of their mental capabilities. Astrology and numerology are the guiding force of Harry and Kate’s lives. Tragic and sincere as their love is, Harry and Kate finally face the fatal consequences of living without godly guidance.