It sounded real interesting, and it should have been. They open with a quick explanation of the orphan trains without much detail, rattle off a couple of cases, and then it becomes the Emily show and we follow her journey for probably at least half the runtime. To be frank, her story just isn't that compelling and it's not really an orphan train story. It's mostly "she was sent to this family, but they hated her, so she got shipped to another family who "had no use for her" after a couple of months, then she got sent over to another family and they grew tired of her, etc." The opening puts up that this is based on a book about her, but the title of the documentary isn't "Emily's Orphan Train", so I was expecting it to be focused on the history and impact of the orphan trains, not poorly told story of a woman who was on one. The productions quality just isn't that good either; it comes across and a poorly researched and funded PBS special that they'd throw on in the middle of the night just to be able to tell the director that they aired it. In the end, we started off with the doc I wanted and expected, but I third of the way in the conductor switched tracks and ended up derailing not too much later.
It sounded real interesting, and it should have been. They open with a quick explanation of the orphan trains without much detail, rattle off a couple of cases, and then it becomes the Emily show and we follow her journey for probably at least half the runtime. To be frank, her story just isn't that compelling and it's not really an orphan train story. It's mostly "she was sent to this family, but they hated her, so she got shipped to another family who "had no use for her" after a couple of months, then she got sent over to another family and they grew tired of her, etc." The opening puts up that this is based on a book about her, but the title of the documentary isn't "Emily's Orphan Train", so I was expecting it to be focused on the history and impact of the orphan trains, not poorly told story of a woman who was on one. The productions quality just isn't that good either; it comes across and a poorly researched and funded PBS special that they'd throw on in the middle of the night just to be able to tell the director that they aired it. In the end, we started off with the doc I wanted and expected, but I third of the way in the conductor switched tracks and ended up derailing not too much later.
