"Running" on Empty

Take two white, Jewish lesbians. Stir in three adopted children (a boy of mixed race, another boy who is Korean and an African girl). Make a documentary about their lives. There could certainly be enough to hold our attention, at least based on the setup. However, Nicole Opper's "Off and Running" feels incredibly sanitized to present everyone in the most optimal light.

The setting is Brooklyn, and the star of the show is Avery, the African-American teenage girl. She is a gifted runner who hopes to get a scholarship at the university. But she is troubled, and the main cause is her desire to learn about her biological parents. Her quest to do so is supposed to be the lynch pin here but it falls flat, as does much of the rest of the events in the film.

There is almost no conflict in "Off and Running, at least not on-screen. It is mentioned and alluded to but its exclusion from our curious eyes makes it feel like watching an R-rated film on network television. What we are left with is a setting where everyone is loving and good, to the point where it could be "The Waltons", albeit with totally different family components.

Everyone is nice, even when they are going through what should be very tough times. The parents, who often don't even know the whereabouts of Avery, smile for the camera and tell us incredibly adult, modern, happy, understanding views of Avery's off-screen travails. By the time it was over, I hoped that something of interest might happen but I was disappointed when I realized my wait was going to be fruitless.

The juicy stuff was edited out, leaving us with a bland skeleton. There is a conscious need in this production to present the family in the best light. Maybe Opper was a friend of the family and was afraid of offending them but I would have preferred offending the family to offending the audience.