It was perhaps predictable that there should be tedious patches in a tug-of-love story that wears its badges of political correctness so prominently on its sleeve.

And the ending, too, is a trifle too convenient for us all.

Although this is how America would like to think that life and minds work in its black and white communities, the issues are probably less clear-cut than portrayed here.

White fortysomething Jessica Lange adopts the baby boy that black crack addict Halle Berry leaves in a cardboard box while looking for drugs.

When Berry returns, dustmen have collected it and she assumes the baby is dead.

Three years later, rehabilitated, if little better housed, she finds the child is alive and launches a legal battle to get him back.

Now as she comes to court looking not like a bag-lady but Halle Berry, there seems little doubt about the outcome.

But the film-makers are more anxious to provide an emotive and upbeat ending than in showing us how (badly) things might have turned out.