During the Lorenzo's Oil time period, there were tons of theatrical and television movies about sick or dying children and their long-suffering parents. If you want to see Liza Minnelli's version, rent A Time to Live, in which her son Corey Haim is suffering from muscular dystrophy. Liza and her husband Jeffrey DeMunn go to many different doctors, even a spiritual one in Paris, but no one can help Corey. He's just going to get worse and worse until eventually he's in a wheelchair permanently. The most touching scene for me was when Corey is presented with his wheelchair. Jeffrey "test-drives" it for him, but Corey's afraid because his doctor told him once he gets in the wheelchair, he'll never get out. Jeffrey tells him to sit down in it, and then to get up, showing that it's not necessarily forever. Liza's mother starts to cry, and Liza gives her tough love, forbidding her to cry in front of Corey again. It's positive, positive, positive at their house all day, every day.
Liza's high energy is off the charts in her constant attempts to distract her son from his crippling condition and make his life as good as possible. As often happens, her attention to Corey sometimes makes her other, healthy son feel ignored and unloved. She also feels resentful that Jeffrey doesn't help out very often. Her manic high can only last so long, and combined with chronic insomnia, we can feel she's about to snap at any given moment. It's a great performance, but a very sad story, so does anyone really want to sit down and watch it? She won a well-deserved Golden Globe for the movie, though, so if you are a fan of hers and want to see her looking very pretty and acting very well (sometimes they don't both go hand in hand), you can try it.
