Lifetime
The Lifetime network has gotten into the ‘Octomom’ business — sixteen years after the fact — banking on some kind of renewed interest in Natalie Suleman and her octuplets with people who followed the saga or perhaps those who are going to be curious about the word ‘octomom’.
The ‘Octomom’ saga began in 2009 when a woman named Natalie Suleman gave birth to the first surviving octuplets. Suleman’s story began before that, of course, and I Was Octomom: The Natalie Suleman Story aims to take us through her journey. Suleman was a single mother with six children already but she felt she needed one more to complete her family. During this time, she could barely support herself, living with her parents and attending college to get her Masters, but she just had the nagging desire for one more child. Having been unsuccessful with her ex to get pregnant on her own, Suleman had undergone IVF to build her family, and she planned to do that again one more time using the embryos that had previously been frozen. No one in Natalie’s life thought this was a good idea, and her mother in particular had some very harsh reactions to everything Natlie was doing. She did have some support from her best friend Beth — but even she didn’t think Natalie needed another baby (her youngest were two years old). But Natalie had the procedure anyway, and while she was under anesthesia but still kind of awake, the doctor told her she had a uterine contraction that expelled the six embryos he had implanted, and he wanted her to sign off on the implantation of the remaining six. Not quite coherent, Natalie scribbled her name on the form and the process was restarted. But things took a major turn when she learned there were multiple heartbeats — seven, to be exact … which was odd since there were only six embryos. And when it came time to give birth, there was a previously undetected eighth baby, all healthy, an unprecedented event.
Natalie hoped to return to finish her degree, but juggling FOURTEEN children while living under her parents’ roof, and her mother becoming increasingly hands off because she never approved of Natalie going through with the procedure and six kids were already taking a toll on her (she refused to deal with ‘the eight’, as they were called), made things increasingly tense, with Natalie and the kids finally moving into their own place (Natlie had hired others to help with the children’s care but it’s never made clear where she’s getting all of this money, so the only other person we ever see helping out is Beth). But unable to return to school and unable to get a job because of her notoriety — thanks to the hospital arranging for her to have a publicist, which she never wanted — money is tight and Natalie has to resort to giving stories to the tabloids — basically calling herself an employee of TMZ and other outlets — to make ends meet. But she is unable to make those ends meet and resorts to doing a solo adult film for $1 million, but her dependence on prescription medication began to take its toll, forcing Natalie to leave her children (it seems her mother and Beth did most of the heavy lifting) while she attempted to get herself cleaned up. That took her out of the spotlight and allowed them to return to a normal life and Natlie even got a new job and home out of it. But did they all get a happy ending?
Lifetime
I Was Octomom: The Natalie Suleman Story is an interesting biopic in that it actually uses the real Suleman as our guide through her life story, interjecting important bits of information — such as her relationship with her mother, admitting to the mistakes she made, the actions she took against the doctor — while Kristen Lee Gutoskie take on the role of Suleman in the film. Gutoskie is actually quite impressive as Suleman, perfectly nailing the tone of her voice (easy to Suleman popping in from time to time), and doing her darnedest to make Suleman sympathetic (and the movie touches on the hatred she and her babies received, including death threats to all of them), showing her shock when she realizes what had been done to her and refusing to pick and choose which babies would survive and which would be culled. Gutoskie does a great job at showing us all of Suleman’s ups and downs, the tension with her mother and the true friendship she had with Beth, but above all, she makes sure we believe Natalie always had the best interests of her children in mind.
Caitlyn Stryker is also excellent as Beth, always supporting her friend while also trying to be the voice of reason, even handling the one major clash they had with grace and not running off to leave the ungrateful Natlie on her own. Anita Wittenberg is terrific as mom Angela, even though the character is pretty much one-note until she finally melts that wall of ice between her and her daughter near the end of the movie, finally showing some heart when she tells Natalie she has always loved her and she loves all of the children. (And if anyone ever does a movie about Nina Garcia, this is the woman who can bring that role to life). Genevieve Fleming is a bit ‘Stepford Wife’-ish as the hospital rep pushing Natalie into picking a PR person — making it seem that this is obviously for the hospital’s benefit instead of Natlie’s and her kids — while Jovanna Burke plays the high-powered PR person to perfection, always coming off as a bit overbearing and manipulative, again probably more for the hospital’s benefit. All of the cast, including the child actors playing her older children, do some really good work.
But … and here’s where a three-star review gets knocked down to two … when the movie ends we get some facts about what happened with Natalie’s mom, her actions against her health care providers, and how the kids have actually grown up to be well-adjusted individuals (Natlie even has her first grandchild now). And right after all of this, there is a disclaimer that says the movie is a dramatization with fictionalized events, and we shouldn’t infer anything about anyone in the film, leaving us to wonder what exactly is true and what isn’t. One would assume the essence of Suleman’s story is intact, especially with her participation but now we’re left with many questions about what we just saw. Is Beth real? Was her mother really that much of a word that rhymes with witch to her and the babies? How did she really end up with twelve implanted embryos (the doctor claims she begged him to implant them all … at least in this version of the story)? Yes, true life stories often have dramatized events just to make the stories more interesting but creating events from real life and selling them as true just leaves a bad taste in the mouth. That doesn’t take away from the performances or the production which is excellent in general (and were those real babies Gutoskie was holding while in the NICU?). It’s worth the watch but it feels now that it’s more of a publicity piece for the upcoming docuseries featuring Suleman and her kids than it is a movie that aims to tell her true story.
I Was Octomom: The Natalie Suleman Story has a run time of 1 hour 27 minutes, and is rated TV-PG.
I Was Octomom | First Look Trailer
Lifetime