I felt compelled to write a review about Ambulance Girl after noticing that no one else has done so yet. It's one of my top ten favorite movies. Granted, I'm partial to movies about the fire department because I joined one in 1979 and spent 16 years as a volunteer EMT. I also took fire suppression classes and worked my way up to CRT (cardiac rescue technician), which is equivalent to an intermediate EMT by today's standards.

This is a true story about Jane Stern, a 52 year old, obese and out of shape woman. She and her husband are food critics and they fly all over the country to do reviews and write books. She is well educated and they seem to have a very nice life but Jane is depressed and has multiple phobias. I can certainly identify with this, as I suffer from depression myself.

Jane and her husband are on a plane flight that gets grounded for several hours and they are trapped. Jane is one unhappy camper. A young man on the plane with her has an episode of low blood sugar and becomes ill. Jane distracts herself from worrying long enough to give him some candy that she had in her purse. This helps the boy recover from his episode and Jane is ecstatic.

Once Jane returns home, she sees a sign at their local fire department for volunteers and decides to join. The scenes where Jane is doing her EMT training brought a smile to my face as it instantly brought back memories. As a 19 year old, skinny teenager, I faced many of the same challenges that Jane faced during her training. I was hysterical when they showed her learning how to take a classmate down a flight of steps in a stair chair and she drops him!

Jane wavers back and forth trying to decide if this is what she wants to do but she enjoys the comradarie of the fire department. She becomes addicted to how alive it makes her feel. She completes EMT and is finally allowed to respond to calls.

This is where our experiences take a slightly different turn because my fire department was not as rural as her's apparently was. Where I volunteered, you went to the fire house and waited for calls to come in. Granted, my company was considerably busier than hers, as we got several ambulance calls each day. We also spent some time as a third aide (spare person) before being allowed to be the main caregiver. After considerable more training, I also learned to drive the ambulance. In Jane's community, they responded to a patient's house in their personal car. A professional ambulance company would arrive to take the patient to the hospital.

Those differences aside, watching her initially respond on calls was quite entertaining. The once incident where an old lady falls and hurts her hip and Jane clumsily arrives with her big responder bag and smashes into the lady's foot had me laughing out loud. Maybe that's because I've done this, too.

Slowly, we watch as Jane becomes more proficient at rendering patient care. She gains a multitude of new friends and self-confidence in the process. Just as we start to think everything's well, the strain of her new hobby starts to take it's toll on her marriage. I can vouch for this as well, as I believe my constant volunteering was one of many factors that contributed to the demise of my brief, first marriage.

Even my husband enjoyed watching Ambulance Girl, although he didn't rate it quite as high as I did. He's been in the Baltimore City Fire Department for 32 years and prefers firefighting movies like "Ladder 49" and "Backdraft".

I'm not sure how much non-fire department people will appreciate this movie but I would imagine it's overall theme will resound with all audiences.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older