Movie Review: ***The Face on the Milk Carton: A Bad Adoption Story

Made for t.v. movie (1995) based on the book by Janie Johnson.  My kids use to have the book.  This movie is about how everything is done wrong in an adoption.  Two parents accept their daughter's story of her having a daughter and escaping a cult.  The grandparents take her in as their own, and move, fearing the cult might come after them.  They keep everything secret, and as far as the girl knows they are her parents.  Until she sees her face on a milk carton.  Her face as she was at age three, in a polka dot dress.  She slowly comes to realize that her initial hunches are true, something is not right about the story she has been told.  There are no pictures of her as a baby, there is no birth certificate, she finds Hannah's things in the attic.  She finally confronts her parents, and is told the story about the cult.

However she still cannot let the story go.  She secretly visits the family of the girl on the milk carton, and finds her birth family, not a cult.  She doesn't want to go back with them, but wants to relieve their worry, and writes them a letter, but decides not to mail it.  However she loses the letter, and it gets mailed and contact the other family.

Through court proceeding she returns to live with strangers, her birth family.  This is a struggle.  She is homesick.  She misses her boyfriend; she misses her parents.  The true story comes out, Hannah kidnapped her.  Her parents, as far as we know, did not know; but accepted their daughter's story.

It is a struggle.  Jen's siblings, some of them, are slow to accept her.  She slowly makes adjustments, and bit by bit, the two families begin to tolerate each other.

This is how adoption should never be.  Something based on lies is like a house of cards.  It is sure to tumble.