Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story

Liz Murray grows up in New York. Her parents use drugs and the money in the house goes to the same place every month. The fridge is empty. Liz does not go to school; nobody makes her, and when she goes she is mocked for being dirty. Her mother falls ill. The home breaks up and Liz is on the street at fifteen. She sleeps at a friend's, on the subway, in stairwells. Then she decides: she will finish school. She applies to do a four year programme in two and works at the same time. There is a newspaper scholarship and she has to write an essay to apply. Peter Levin directs. Thora Birch plays Liz; Michael Riley and Kelly Lynch are in the cast. It is an American production, made for television. The ground is real; it rests on Liz Murray's own story, which Murray later put into a book. The matter it treats is using school as a way out; the film builds it as an inspirational story and does not hide the shape. The narrative does not show the family as bad; her mother and father love her and still cannot protect her. Thora Birch was nominated for an Emmy for the part. Its best sections are outside the school; the street scenes and those with her mother. The film is at the scale of a television production; there is no visual claim and the narrative is plain. Its limit is method; the emotional steering is high, the narrative conventional, and the difficulties are got past quickly. Who it is for: viewers who like drama drawn from real stories. Who it is not for: it is conventional, the emotional dose high, and the ending too tidy.