According to national statistics, there are two million children who rely on their grandparents to raise them. In Big Mama, a touching and completely poignant look at the phenomenon of grandparents raising grandchildren, Viola Dees, an 89-year-old African American woman, struggles to take care of her 9-year-old grandson, Walter. Entrusted to Viola by his deceased father and abandoned by a mother addicted to drugs, Walter is a typical youngster, whose 9-year-old shenanigans are sadly exacerbated by the drugs his mother passed from her system to his at birth. Although the child welfare system continually threatens to separate Viola and Walter, their obvious love for one another is the tie that binds their little makeshift family together.