This is a very good movie that I would recommend for anyone, especially those with a family. It has action elements to keep the men entertained and a plot touching enough to make those same testosterone filled men blubber like babies.
Basically the premise is simple, Heather, a young lady played by the enchanting Jennifer Love Hewitt (called simply Love Hewitt in the credits) lives with her stepmother after her birth father passed away. She longs to meet her biological mother so she is forced to run away from home. The stepmother then hires a detective to find her for a large reward. The plot thickens when the stepmother tries to double cross the detective and save the reward money leading to both Heather and the newly hired detective being on the lamb together.
The character development is good, but not great. The characters are mostly two dimensional. The step mother is the typical wicked kind, the FBI agents are stereotypically bumbling throughout. Also the detectives business associate is the typical tightwad. Fortunately the important roles more than make up for the supporting cast.
Howard Hesseman makes a wonderful if not formulaic grouch and Love Hewitt is so adorable you'll like the movie just because she's in it. Their characters start out with a lot of animosity which is to be expected, only to find that they are more alike than meets the eye.
The ending isn't surprising, and the movie flows smoothly along without any unexpected twists. There is a story to de told and the director wisely left the twists out instead focusing on the stars, keeping everything else to a minimum. Not every movie can pull this off, but in this case Hewitt and Hessman are all you care about, so more would have been just that, more. I'm not going to give away too much but that you will leave feeling better for having seen it.
