MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Love Your Mama’ Unpolished but Spirited : The film is not exactly sophisticated or deep, but it’s got heart and drive and it doesn’t hold back.

Pity the poor, all-too-jaded critic confronted with a movie like “Love Your Mama” (GCC Hollywood Galaxy, Baldwin Complex). Bashing it would be like trashing Santa Claus. Or your mama.

It’s about motherhood, sticking together and fighting for your dream; about the seemingly endless trials and tribulations of a struggling African-American family in Chicago’s ghetto and how they finally break through. And it’s the feature debut of filmmaker Ruby L. Oliver, who spent more than 23 years operating day-care centers in that same ghetto, then retired, worked her way through Columbia College Film School, graduated with honors and, finally, scraped together the $500,000 budget to make “Mama.”

Talk about awesome energy. Not only did Oliver produce, direct and write the movie, but she scouted the locations and decorated the sets. And her intentions are the best: “Love Your Mama” details the plight and triumph of the Brown family--which include an alcoholic, philandering father; an unwed, pregnant daughter; a car-boosting son paralyzed in a police gun-down--and it’s intended to instill faith, hope and courage in its audiences, help them battle through the dangers and frustrations of big-city ghetto life.

How can you say anything bad about a project like this, without coming across like one of the grouches in the movie: all those over-smug bank officers who keep turning down the loan applications of Mama and her daughter Leola for their day-care center?

Fortunately, “Love Your Mama” is a movie that wears down your resistance. When I saw it last year at AFIFEST, it struck me as amateurish and overstated, awkwardly written and far too obviously staged and acted. Seeing it again, I’m convinced I was hasty, culturally and morally wrong, and maybe artistically wrong as well.

“Love Your Mama” simply shouldn’t be judged by the standards we use for polished medium or big-budget professional productions, because that’s what it isn’t -- though, in her photography (by Ronald Courtney) and editing, Oliver has succeeded admirably in getting it to look like one. It was shot in the area around 35th and 40th streets in Chicago’s Lower South Side and the female lead, Carol E. Hall as Leola, is a Chicago first grade teacher who does acting and modeling on the side.

Most of the rest of the actors, including the wonderful, full-throated Audrey Morgan as magisterial Mama, are making their film debuts. And, considering that, the cast--especially Hall, Morgan, Andre Robinson, Earnest III Rayford, Kearo Johnson and Artavia Wright as the Brown family and Jacqueline Williams as Leola’s bumptious buddy--deserve praise.

“Love Your Mama” is not exactly sophisticated or deep. Its dramatic style is more clearly influenced by TV soap operas than anything else. The delivery of the actors is often so measured--and so loud--that they suggest an enthusiastic little theater group playing to the back of a very large house.

But it’s got heart and drive and spirit, and it doesn’t hold back. If Oliver isn’t speaking in the cadences of the savvy pro, at least she’s talking about what she sees and knows. If there’s melodrama or overstatement in that speech, and a kind of fairy-tale wish-fulfillment in the magical climax--the key, apparently is finding the right bank officer--then somehow it fits.

What the movie does have is a crystal-clear style, in which everything seems bathed in sharp sunlight: warm, open, unabashed, truly sincere. Oliver often holds her camera tight and still on an actor in a heavy emotional scene and the actors, especially Morgan and Hall, break down, weep real tears.

Something in Oliver’s dramatic style probably reflects her background in day care. As a filmmaker, she speaks in the same cheerful, careful, over-enunciated tone teachers use with their small charges; it’s probably no accident than one of “Love Your Mama’s “ best scenes is in a day-care center, full of lively, happy kids. Is it objectionable for a movie to speak to us as if we were children? Not necessarily. Remember where “Love Your Mama” (MPAA-rated: PG-13) came from, and whom it’s talking to, and its spirit-raising, uplifting little ghetto song will reach you.

‘Love Your Mama’ Carol E. Hall: Leola Audrey Morgan: Mama Andre Robinson: Wren Earnest III Rayford: Sam

A Hemdale Communications presentation of an Oliver productions film. Director/producer/editor/set decorator/screenplay Ruby L. Oliver. Cinematographer Ronald Courtney. Editor Joy L. Rencher. Music John Van Allen Jr., Markian Fedorowycz. Sound Jacob D. Collins. Running time: 1 hour, 33 minutes.

MPAA-rated PG-13.