Audrey’s Children Review – Inspirational, Heartwarming, A Must See

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Category: Film

Published on Thursday, 27 March 2025 09:46

Written by Janet Walker

Audrey's Children, from Blue Harbor Entertainment, presents a magnificent, heartwarming gem, telling the story of Dr. Audrey Evans, the first female Chief of Oncology, her dedication and effort to discover new treatments to reduce the mortality rate.

The film begins in a dreary hospital ward, Dr. Audrey Evans, played by Natalie Dormer, is pushing a child in a wheelchair who is holding a rabbit in a cage. She explains to the child, in her delightful, but peculiar British accent, at least to the children of Philadelphia, as she places the bunny on the table for X-rays, that it doesn't hurt bunny, so it won't hurt you.  

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After, she meets her intern Dr. Brian Faust, played by Brandon Michael Hall, who explains he is such a big fan and can't really have animals in the infectious disease unit. So, she hands the bunny off to him to return to the lab.

Now, she is carrying a lamp and walking through the halls of the Children's Hospital in Philadelphia, CHOP as the hospital is known, and she stops at the office of Dr. Dan D'Angio, played by Jimmie Simpson, the head of radiation. She puts her things down, puts her feet on his desk, and begins to review his mail. The door opens, and in typical meet-cute fashion Dr. Dan D'Angio and Dr. Audrey Evans, both deeply dedicated to the advancement of cancer treatments, meet.

As this is a film about a medical breakthrough, we follow the medical diagnosis of two children, Mia McAlister, played by Julianna Layne, who is fine one day and overnight develops a mass in her abdomen. We also meet her parents, Rita, played by Kat Murphy, and Alvin, played by J.P. Edwards.  The second child we meet is baby Charlie, played by Dominic Sacchetti, and his mother, Kate Watson, played by Evelyn Giovine, who traveled from Tennessee to have her son treated at CHOP.

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Soon Dr. Evans is upsetting the status quo her youth, vitality, and dedication to her pediatric patients, and willingness to embarrass herself to advance cancer treatment for those in her care causes her nemesis, Dr. Jeremy Lewis, played by Ben Chase, to report her for reckless disregard of the rules.

When she is told that her research, pairing the two drugs, radiation and chemotherapy will need to wait a year, she approaches Jarva Pharmaceutical company for assistance. They provide her with the funds to keep the study alive. For this she is ostracized by the all-male Board of Directors.

As she is showing one of the test mice to Mia, she asks her why the mouse doesn't have a blue belly, like hers, and even as Dr. Audrey tries to explain, Mia is stuck on why the mouse doesn't have a blue belly, which causes Dr. Audrey to realize location of the tumor is critical to the treatment of the patient. With permission from Dr. C. Everett Koop, played by Clancy Brown, she is given the data from the other pediatric patients.

She begins the clinical study, which combines doses of both radiation and chemotherapy, and when it is discovered that she was treating Mia, with the clinical trial combination drug treatment, she is suspended. Her nemesis, Dr. Lewis takes over Mia's care, and while he is reviewing the X-rays, he finds the tumor shrank. Both Dr. Koop and Dr. Lewis realize the only difference in treatment was the combination trial.

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Kate, the mother of baby Charlie, not yet a year old, cannot afford housing during her stay in Philadelphia. Dr. Audrey offers her home, and then the idea of a place, a home, where parents of patients can stay with no charge so they while their children receive care was born. Kat finally decides she would rather give her baby a few happy moments, if all he has left is a few weeks.

After Dr. Audrey is suspended she returns home to find Kate sitting on her steps with her baby Charlie, who is healthy, healed, and cured. Suddenly she sees the correlation between the location of the cancer and the likelihood of survival, and she and Dr. Dan and Dr. Faust, who have gained access to the patient records from other hospitals and are categorizing the past patients, which explained the discovery of the cancer, and the probability of cure, and the Evans Neuroblastoma Cancer staging system is discovered.

Battling sexism, medical conventions, and the subterfuge of her peers, Audrey's Children is an emotionally uplifting film, and shows the dedication, drive, and tenacity needed to overcome ingrained societal stigmas in the late 1960s and 1970s. Unfortunately, these stigmas may have changed but others, more challenging were built in their place.

The film's ensemble cast deliver authentic, emotionally gripping, performances. The ensemble of children performing as cancer patients in various stages of treatment, is heart wrenching. The audience is invested in each moment of the film.

The contributions to pediatric cancer research by Dr. Audrey Evans cannot be minimized, her effort, grit, and unyielding determination helped increase the survival rate of childhood cancer from 10% to 80%. Her resolute and unwavering effort to help those they care for though housing and again her boldness in asking helped establish and co-found the first Ronald McDonald House, for caregivers to stay while their children receive cancer care, ultimately, impacted the lives of millions of children and families around the world.

Heartwarming, inspirational and uplifting, Audrey's Children, opens in theaters Friday, March 28, 2025. It is a must see.

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Country: U.S.

Language: English.

Runtime: 110 minutes.

Director: Ami Canaan Mann.

Executive Producer: Clement Bauer, Susan Cartsonis, Brent Emery, Suzanne Farwell, Michael Leahy.

Producer: Julia Fisher Farbman, Bradley Gallo, Michael Helfant.

Writer: Julia Fisher Farbman.

Cast: Natalie Dormer, Jimmi Simpson, Clancy Brown, Brandon Michael Hall, Julianna Layne, Evelyn Giovine, Tony Robinette, Rose Decker, Jose Pistone, Maggie Toomey, Michelle Santiago, Ben Chase, Scott Vogel, Roberto Lombardi, Callen Barry, Barney Fitzpatrick, J.P. McAllister, Kat Murphy, Jeff Mark.

Janet Walker is the publisher, founder, and sole owner of Haute-Lifestyle.com. A graduate of New York University, she has been covering international news through the Beltway Insider, a weekly review of the nation's top stories, for more than a decade.  A general beat writer/reporter and entertainment/film critic, she is also an accomplished news/investigative news/crime reporter and submitted for Pulitzer Prize consideration "Cops Conspire to Deep Six Sex Assaults" in the Breaking News Category and was persuaded to withdraw the submission. Ms. Walker has completed five screenplays, "The Six Sides of Truth," "The Assassins of Fifth Avenue," "The Wednesday Killer," "The Manhattan Project," and the sci-fi thriller "Project 13: The Last Day." She is completing the non-fiction narrative, "Unholy Alliances: A True Crime Story," which is expected to be released in early 2025. She is a member of the Los Angeles Press Club, the National Writers Union, and a former member of the International Federation of Journalists.