I Love You Like Crazy Cakes

Based on Rose Lewis's 2000 picture book, illustrated by Jane Dyer, chronicling the author's journey to China to adopt a baby girl, I Love You Like Crazy Cakes has much to recommend it. Winsomely narrated by supermom Mia Farrow, the film boasts very nice iconographic animation of Dyer's beautiful watercolor images, and features a characteristically lovely score by Ernest V. Troost. Unfortunately, the story is less than gripping (literally: mom picks up kid, bonds, flies home, sets up room), and the writing is utterly prosaic (sample: "I brought you back to the hotel and set you down on the bed to get a good look at you"). Granted, to paraphrase The Platters, this may be a case of "testosterone gets in [the reviewer's] eyes,'' but--to be honest--I'm no stranger to Kleenex and this just didn't move me at all (even with enough baby cooing sounds planted on the soundtrack to make me wonder whether the Teletubbies had visited the set during production). So, who's the audience for this? Not young boys (who will be bored silly), and probably not even young girls (who create better storylines playing with their dolls); my guess is that this admittedly lovely production will appeal only to (first-time) pregnant moms and potential adoptive parents. Optional. Aud: K, E, P. (R. Pitman)