Dawn Anna (2005 TV Movie) User Reviews

Excellent movie but still some questions prevail

[MarieGabrielle · 7/10 · 21 September 2005]

This movie was shown on Lifetime, and is well worth it; the family is very realistic, the story is, as we know, tragic, but the message is hopeful as it is seen from Dawn Anna's perspective. Debra Winger is excellent, and understated, as well as the ensemble cast.

We learn of Dawn Anna's medical illness, and struggle to support her children as a single mom. There is, however no trite and superficial dialog; (think Desperate Housewives melodrama). This is normally hard to find on Lifetime, which primarily portrays women as victims,and one-dimensional characters.

The story is well acted, and portrays the family very well, but the ending is somewhat of a surprise, and we do not see any foreshadowing of problems at the high school.

I would have liked more depth, (i.e. The cable movie "Bang, bang! You're Dead") since this topic is so important, and relevant to problems in American society, the audience is entitled to some theory or detail from the writer, as to events which led up to the Columbine killings.

This is a very human story, and it was helpful to portray the life of Dawn Anna's family; but I think there is also a bigger picture which we need to know about, and this could have been written into the story without concentrating solely on the perpetrators, or victims.

The movie with it's surprise ending humanized at least one family in this tragedy

[southbronxchic · 7/10 · 3 September 2006]

I selected this movie having no idea what it was truly about. The ending was a surprise and of course drove me to the internet to do some research to learn more about the details that led to the shootings. It's made it a bit more personal and humanized the strangers and the victims. It's always sad when one's life is cut short. It's sadder when you are brought into that person's life and given a glimpse of how they lived. It's a shame. So young! To die so young! To be cheated of ones future especially when you did everything right, raised your child properly. Our society needs a major makeover. And if this tragedy doesn't teach us a lesson, then Lord knows what will.

better to not keep it a secret

[SnoopyStyle · 6/10 · 20 September 2015]

Dawn Anna Townsend (Debra Winger) is a single mom of four teens struggling to make ends meet. She gets a low paying teaching job and becomes a beloved volleyball coach. Fellow teacher Bink takes a liking to her. She becomes chronically ill and hospitalized. She struggles to recover with the help of her kids, Bink and fellow teachers. Then the massacre at Columbine High School kills her daughter Lulu.

It's great to see Debra Winger again. She's terrific and she is sorely missed. The first hour is functional sick mother movie. It has very little drama and no tension at all. Then the movie reveals a surprise that she's been teaching at Columbine all along. It's a shocking turn. I want to like this for Debra Winger and the subject matter. However the surprise is unnecessary and too distracting. The movie would work even better by showing Columbine from the very beginning. It would keep the tension high as the anticipation of the massacre grows.

Dawn Anna is a very inspirational movie and a tearjerker

[bigchief0418 · 10 February 2005]

I loved this movie. It showed how you get through life's ups and downs and they couldn't have chose a better actress, Debra Winger. All of the cast acted as if they were a real family, I couldn't have asked for a better cast!! The only thing is that you have to watch the beginning of the movie to understand it, because if you don't watch the beginning you'll get lost.Dawn Anna lets you know that family is very important and spending time with your family is very important. Dawn Anna went through a lot and with the help of her kids and her very caring boyfriend she wouldn't have made it through. I rate this movie a 10 out of 10 stars. It has excellent actors/actresses, and excellent directory and filmography. I LUV THIS MOVIE SOOOOO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!

A movie about a woman who has to overcome lifes ordeals and keep giving with her love.

[chrisboelens2000 · 10/10 · 14 January 2005]

This movie was one of the best I have seen in a long time. The performance by the cast was great. Debra Winger gives the performance of her life and tells all to keep trying when things don't work out. This movie had me crying by the end. Liftime has choose a winner on this one. I hope that they can set the bar for movies that help change peoples point of view and make us all be thankful for what we have. thank you to the writers directors and producers of this fantastic movie. Also i hope that i see Debra Winger in more movies she is one of the best actresses i have ever seen on the screen. She has a way of making me feel exactly what she is feeling. Thanks again!!!!!!!!

Great Story of Tragedy and the Will to Live!!!

[ENIGMA05 · 10/10 · 10 January 2005]

This heroic story is about a single mother with four kids that is threatened with a brain tumor and survives a dangerous operation and side effects only to lose her youngest child in the Columbine High School Massacre.

Any normal person faced with such incredible odds would just crumble under its weight or give up. But Dawn Anna isn't just any normal person. She is an extraordinary person. Debra Winger (Dawn Anna) delivers a performance so amazing you feel as if you were right there with her while she was going through all these trying and horrible times. This mother took her daughters murder and turned it into a fight for gun control. She didn't just hide away and let this unthinkable crime leave her hopeless. On the contrary, she is one of the most formidable pioneers for any cause of our time.

If this movie teaches anything, that is that even when the fates deal a cruel blow (or two), the nature of a woman, a mother, a fighter, is to never give up. To continue to live, so that the legacy her daughter left behind lives on forever.

My Rating for this film: 10 (EXCELLENT)

The Greatest Story Never Told

[tinkerbelllcf · 3/10 · 12 January 2005]

I was very disappointed with Dawn Anna. I have been an avid Columbine researcher for nearly a year or so now and was highly looking forward to this movie. I almost feel horrible saying the movie was bad simply because it was all true events and tragic nonetheless. So, before I begin, I think the story itself is fascinating and inspiring, but it came across weak in this movie.

The story is Dawn Anna is a single mother of four terrific kids who is in desperate need of a job. So, in less than ten minutes, she gets one as a teacher. And five minutes from that, she decides to be the volleyball coach after meeting nice guy Bink, who wants to take her out to dinner and in no time, they're an official couple. The kids seem to warm up to him quickly except one, but a sudden turn of events puts that on hold. Dawn Anna discovers (after tumbling around in school and forgetting things easily) that she has some sort of brain tumor and it needs to be removed via opening the skull. So, in the span of fifteen minutes, Dawn is checked by a doctor, a diagnosis is made, she attempts to have it removed one way (which fails), then she has to official surgery and gets it removed.

From there, we see that after the surgery, Dawn is unable to speak or walk. So, the kids and Bink (they all like him now) take it as their responsibility to help her. She learns to speak and walk in roughly fifteen more minutes after going through physical therapy and reading flashcards. She's finally allowed to go home and Bink finally proposes to her. Some evening a few days after (or seconds, depending on who's time your on), Dawn is tucking in her daughter Lauren, who up until now wasn't the main focus whatsoever, and we zip up to five years later (1999). Lauren is now the only child still living at home. All of a sudden, Lauren becomes a more interesting character and a larger focal point. We're now about an hour an fifteen minutes into the movie.

After a brief subplot of Lauren's sister getting engaged and Lauren having an extremely weird discussion with her mother (which is thrown in there simply to show the relationship between them, I believe), we get to the Columbine story. After Lauren is dropped off at her school, a young man is wearing a Columbine jacket, which is the first we hear about what school officially she attends. A commercial break occurs with police sirens in the fade out. Once we understand what is going on, Dawn rushes home to watch the news stories in bewilderment (these are real news casts from the event as well). The family gathers around and victims advocates come to the house to get information on her daughter. They announce her daughter is a victim on TV the next day and make it official. This all happens in ten minutes. We spend no time worrying for her daughter or seeing the growing panic in the household because we're running out of time. The film ends with the family trying to get back on their feet and Dawn becoming a public speaker on gun control. She ends by going to visit Lauren's grave (which also looks exactly like the real Lauren Townsend's grave up close, so I think it probably is, but the crane shot doesn't look like the real cemetery). The film is dedicated to the lives lost at Columbine even though we barely spend any time thinking about it and we don't even seem to care about Lauren until the film is more than half over.

I thought the story was just a jumble of events. They didn't follow any distinct direction except the "Let's just throw in one bad thing after another to show how this woman can overcome it all." The character development just wasn't there. I've studied the real Dawn Anna and her daughter, Lauren Townsend, for some time now, and I can say that both were and are remarkable women. Debra Winger is also a terrific actress who is often underrated. I was just disappointed with how both the acting and the story didn't compliment each other. It seems like the movie was under such pressure to stuff everything into just two hours that we didn't have time to even discuss where the real father was, the marriage between Bink and Dawn, or Lauren being an extremely scholarly student (she was named Valedictorian posthumously at her graduation). If this film had been made into a two part series or even a mini series, I think it would have been much more effective and we could have gotten a lot more story-line. Unfortunately, I don't believe Debra Winger's talents were used to their fullest potential and I don't believe the story of Dawn Anna and her daughter was of remote interest the way it was told.

Debra WInger was Awesome

[whpratt1 · 10/10 · 23 September 2005]

Enjoyed viewing this film and the great unity of a family with their mother and each other. There was a bonding between this family no matter what situations they seemed to face and with all the odds against them. All the members in this film showed they all had a purpose driven life and a great will to live. One sister enjoyed watching nature in all forms of life, hawk, young baby chic and dreamed of flying through the air in her dreams. This film was well directed and very down to earth about what life is really all about. Debra Winger,(Dawn Anna Townsend),"An Officer & Gentlemen",'82, put her heart and soul into her acting as she always has in her film career. There was very joyous scenes in this film and also very bitter and heart breaking ones. Great film, with all great actors.

Can the scriptwriters spell "hagiography"?

[saintcecilia · 5/10 · 26 February 2007]

First, I would like to say that Debra Winger's performance is superb. Having had a relative undergo brain surgery and then rehab, I know that Ms Winger got it all so right it was almost painful to watch.

And the last section was excellent (not in terms of what took place) but it showed what it's like to be a bystander/victim, to be suddenly caught up in events that you can't understand and all you can do is wait and hope. It also showed the shortcomings of live TV, with the reporter repeating the same words over and over again - not conveying any information, just intent on avoiding dead air. The coverage of London subway bombings was the same, with an endless loop of firemen in their HazMat gear and a distant shot of the destroyed bus.

So what didn't I like? Well, it's more what wasn't there. I know it's hard making a film about real people who have access to real defamation lawyers if they're so minded. I just couldn't believe that four teenagers and a single mother, living in cramped conditions with limited finances, never once screamed at each other or stomped off and slammed doors or stayed out too late or got drunk or any of the things teenagers do. The five actors playing the children did an excellent job but there was a lack of conflict, thus a lack of drama.

And why is the film so coy about the whereabouts of the father (or fathers) of the children? I assume that, if Ms Anna had been widowed, that would have been mentioned, just adding to the tragedy. So either she's divorced (at least once) or she was an unwed mother. Either way, why not tell us? It would just have added to the sense of her courage and stamina that she managed to raise four children on her own.

Oh, and the scene where all the people line up to give Ms Anna their sick leave? Maybe it really happened that way but I doubt it. How did all those people take the time off simultaneously to hand over their forms? Who was minding the store?

The fact is, ordinary people can be heroes and still be human. Maybe Ms Anna really is as she was portrayed in this film, but the film would have meant more if she and the other characters had been allowed to be, well, human.

Dawn Anna/Debra Winger: Beyone Excellent: Superb!!

[cotati5 · 11 January 2005]

Dawn Anna is one of the best dramas and inspirational movies of this new year-2005 and one of the best lifetime movies I have seen! Debra Winger has always been an actress who gives "all of herself..she is so natural and wonderful!" I did tape this movie, but hopefully lifetime will repeat it for anyone who has not seen it as yet. I have been wondering what happened to Debra Winger and as such, when Lifetime announced this movie, I was very excited. Ms. Winger has a rare combination of maturity, inspirational, warm, funny, deep emotional sensitivities and yet "the spirited young girl" comes out in her, portraying the "young at heart." Her portrayals leave me with "ever lasting memories!" I applaud all the characters in this movie! Bravo to Debra Winger and Lifetime T.V! Rhoda Friedman RCJ Enterprises

Excellent and accurate

[keesha_b · 10/10 · 14 February 2006]

As my husband and I watched the movie, the story was eerily similar. I'm also a secondary ed teacher, have had two brain surgeries (for Chiari Malformation not an AVM though), followed by re-hospitalization for severe infection, and had extensive rehabilitation to learn to speak and walk again. Debra Winger's performance was incredible and like looking in a mirror. She accurately portrayed the unending frustration and difficulty involved in the rehab process, and how it takes its toll on the family as well as the patient. The end was completely unexpected and I can't remember the last time I have felt so strongly for a family. To know this is real just breaks my heart, but Dawn Anna's strength keeps me going, as I'm facing a third brain surgery in the next couple weeks.

Dawn Anna Is Another Terms of Endearment ***1/2

[edwagreen · 9/10 · 27 May 2009]

Debra Winger proves her mettle once again as she did 26 years ago in the memorable "Terms of Endearment."

As always, this is a successful film because it deals with a family that comes together to aid their mother, played fantastically by Winger, who is in the grips of a major illness. The cohesiveness of the family structure was never better than depicted in this film. In addition to the warm, caring relationships, Winger finds happiness with a school associate and marriage pursues.

How terrible that one of her children was a victim of the Columbine Massacre. The picture shows how Winger comes to grips with her loss and becomes a crusader against gun violence. A true triumph of the human spirit, this film should not be missed. Endearing as films can be.

Debra Winger is little rusty

[rgundpnn · 10/10 · 18 January 2005]

Debra Winger is seen in a Vital Role after a long time. She appeared little rusty and camera conscious and shown little signs of attention awareness. Except that, she did a fabulous job.

It would have been nice if the movie is little lengthy that might have allowed the director to show the togetherness of the family by infusing some lighter moments. 2 hour movie format and having pressure of showing all the real life events, took little toll on movie and as a result movie appeared heavy.

Except above drawbacks, Debra Winger has put up a very honest performance, which richly deserves all the kudos. Without doubt she is a great artist.

Wonderful movie!

[jewelstar21 · 23 February 2005]

This movie was the best movie I have seen on Lifetime TV so far. I cried from about halfway through the movie until the ending. It's about overcoming terrible events in one family's life and learning that in the end, everything will be OK. The actors and actresses did a superb job or portraying tragic events without taking anything away from the real life events. The cast seemed very comfortable with each other. I agree that one may not understand the meaning of the movie if they have not seen it from the beginning to the end. I would recommend a box of tissues when viewing this movie. I taped this movie and showed my mom, who cried throughout the entire movie.

It makes you wanna cry!

[Irishchatter · 9/10 · 14 April 2016]

Its a very moving, sad and inspiring movie. Debra Winger's performance as Dawn Anna Townsend was absolutely brilliant! It does tell a good story of her lifetime as a single mother and how her life changed with her daughter Lauren life was cut so short from being killed by one of the gunman, Dylan Klebold. Dawn really had such sudden changes like Christ, it is so hard to lose your child. There were scenes that would honestly make you cry and definitely announcing that Lauren was killed in her school. Unfortunately in reality, it did happen on the 20th of April 1999 and the 17th anniversary is only 7 days away! My god, time flies past but it'll never be forgotten...

RIP to the 12 victims that lost their lives during that tragic time <3

Great!

[joannabanana324 · 16 January 2005]

I think people saw this movie expecting a Columbine story. The title of the movie is called "Dawn Anna" not "The story of Columbine High School", so I think it's safe to assume that the movie will be about Dawn Anna. Yes, Columbine was mentioned because Dawn Anna's daughter died at Columbine. They aren't going to center the story around it. It's supposed to be about a woman who goes through a life-threatening illness and her youngest child dying and being able to persevere. I thought this movie was heart-felt, and I found it even more touching because I actually know Dawn Anna since she substituted at my middle school one day. The movie is about the strength of an ordinary woman and the importance of her family. Don't see this movie if you're expecting it to be about Columbine, because you will be disappointed.

Just a comment!

[kasmira36 · 6 September 2007]

I've seen the movie on the local cable TV. It was so touchy that I cried once in a while seeing it. I felt the hurt and pain the family's victims had been through. Wanting some more information about the incident, I'd searched on the internet, and what I'd got surprised me. As far as I see, the USA's government has always showed its power to the world. While the armies and enforcements has Always been quickly approaching other countries, why were they TOO late to save or rescue their own people? Both Cyclone Catarina and The Columbine tragidy have proved those surprising failures to the world. 3 hours in the Columbine's and 5 days in the Catarina's? I couldn't believe it, after they approaching my country, Thailand, not more than 2 or 3 days after the Tsunami's, for help which I, as all people in the country, had appreciated. Anyway, Is there any movie of Coach Dave Sanders, the teacher who sacrified himself to save his students? If there is none, how about some movie producers considering to make one? I think He was truly a hero and I would be truly glad to see it. ^_^

from "Dawn Anna" to "Lauren Townsend?"

[julester · 15 January 2005]

I, too, thought that Debra Winger's performance is outstanding, on a par with hers in "Officer/Gentleman," "Endearment," and "Shadowlands." She is a master at her craft. The supporting cast did exceedingly well also, in my opinion.

My only issue with the writing of this movie is how it is (rightfully so) all about Dawn for the first 100 minutes (with commercials), which is what drew my interest to the movie, but when the movie ends I find myself thinking more about April 20, 1999, and of Lauren, than I do of Dawn. As wonderful as the actresses portraying Lauren did with this role, maybe it would have been better to have better-known actresses portray Lauren, since the viewer was left with the memory of Lauren at the time of the closing dedication to those students who died rather than the wonderful woman who lives on to face the ongoing struggles, coming to terms of what occurred that day. I suppose it doesn't help, my living so near the high school here in Littleton, and still reading and hearing in the daily news about 'Life after Columbine.' Bottom Line: Is this movie just about Ms. Anna, as the title implies, or would a more suitable title have been, "Dawn and Lauren?"