Film’s ending faces identity crisis

For some reason, “Mistaken Identity” — a late-’90s, almost certainly Lifetime Original Movie — can be found in the new releases section at Hastings.

And for some reason, a reason more inexplicable than the film’s shelving, my friends and I decided to rent it.

The plot follows two mothers from opposite sides of the tracks who give birth simultaneously and share a maternity ward hospital room.

A negligent hospital employee accidentally switches the ladies’ babies’ bracelets, and consequently, the women leave with the wrong respective children.

This is revealed to the women after 18 months of breastfeeding, bonding, strife, sorrow and colic when Rosanna Arquette, the poor and unmarried one, has a blood test to prove her baby’s daddy is, indeed, her baby’s daddy.

But, dramatic irony, he is not the baby-daddy, and she is not the baby-mama.

If I had written the movie, this is where hilarity would have ensued.

Instead, because this is Lifetime deluxe, this is where female bonding ensues with Melissa Gilbert, the rich and married one (and also that hallowed Lifetime actress with the annoyingest pitched voice ever allowed on celluloid, excepting Jennifer Jason Leigh).

Drama, legal and personal, follows as lawyers are called in, and a panel of psychologists suggests switching the babies back as soon as possible.

But the mothers want to keep the babies they’ve grown to love and to keep in contact with each other and follow their biological children’s development vicariously.

This is where I dropped out of the movie. Several elements prevented me from watching the end:

The music. The score had a leitmotif that sounded suspiciously like the song Marion sings in “Robin Hood: Men in Tights.”

I couldn’t concentrate on having my tears jerked when all I could think about was Mel Brooks.

The dialogue. So ’90s. And I don’t mean that people talked extraordinarily differently in the ’90s. I mean that writers wrote differently in the ’90s. Like, cheesiest.

As though they were trying to emulate the Golden Age of Hollywood with the stilted dialogue and over-the-top melodrama, but then they remembered it was the ’90s and figured they’d add in some slang and references to downsizing so they’d appear relevant.

The pacing. No suspense. We knew what was happening the whole time: It said right on the box that we’d be in for some baby-switching action. We got the baby switching but not the action.

After the big swap, everything else was basically boring “sisters gotta stick together,” talking-on-the-phone scenes. So many times during the first 45 minutes (the part my friends and I watched), we would say, “So the movie’s over, right?” because all of the plot elements on the box had been revealed.

Space that stuff out, writers. With some spicy bits in between to keep our attention. Duh.

Granted, I didn’t finish the thing, so it may have had an awe-inspiring ending. Or a dramatic/unpredictable twist. I highly doubt it, though.

So, because I can’t ruin the ending with details that actually happened, I figure I can ruin the ending by writing an alternate ending that will make you wish it were the real ending.

Here goes:

Melissa and Rosanna decide not to switch the babies back. They keep in contact and become close friends.

But then Melissa — the rich one, mind you — gets in a car wreck. Her adopted baby — Rosanna’s real baby, mind you — dies, and Melissa is horrifically disfigured.

Distraught, she slips into a depression and holes up in her basement making scrapbooks.

Finally, the scrapbooks finished, she seeks Rosanna and her real baby for comfort.

But, oh goodness! Rosanna has been banging Melissa’s husband! In her own bed!

And the husband has bonded with the biological baby! Melissa finds them in a love nest, making plans for their future as a family.

Melissa is blinded by rage and brutally murders them both with her finished scrapbook, leaves the bloodied artifact behind and goes on the run with the baby.

The police go through her scrapbooking den and find that the books don’t make any sense.

They’re in some kind of code, but the police know the code will lead them to Melissa and the baby.

The lead detective breaks the code and follows Melissa on a nation-wide hunt that culminates at the Largest Ball of Twine, where she has amassed a collection of firearms and vows to go down in a blaze of glory.

“But what about the baby?” the detective says. Maybe the detective is played by Cybill Shepherd.

“It’s not my baby!” Melissa says.

“Yes it is! It’s your flesh and blood!”

“It’s not my heart and soul! My heart and soul died in that car wreck!”

“This is your last warning. Put down your weapons,” says the SWAT commander. Maybe he’s played by Brian Dennehy.

And Melissa doesn’t heed Brian’s last warning. But before she’s riddled with bullets, she throws the baby into the air, and Cybill dives to catch it and saves the day.

The music swells. The end. And what an ending, eh?

Just pretend that’s what happened and skip watching the real one.