A Father's Choice

Mary mcdonnell and peter strauss ruined this film for me because they have the emotional responses of a box of kleenex ... the two young girls acted like they should have after the loss of their adult keeper mother but didn't convince me beyond reproach ...

Not to be disparaging or unfair but this is solidly in the family fare category with solid performances by Peter Strauss and Mary McDonnell.

Sisters Kelly (Michelle Trachtenberg) and Chris McClain (Yvonne Zima) have a comfortable well-off living in L. A. A mystery man kills their mom and lets Chris live. The girls go live with their cowboy father Charlie 'Mac' McClain (Peter Strauss) on a ranch for their safety. Their aunt Gayle Miller (Susan Hogan) wants to take them to Chicago. She never liked Mac. Susan Shaw (Mary McDonnell) is from Family Services.

This is "Inspired by a True Story". Inspired usually means close to fictional. It's a fine family film but it leaves the murder mystery unresolved. It seems like a giant hole in the middle of the movie. I kept waiting for the aunt to be the killer or the father to be accused. The aunt accusing the father would seem to be a good courtroom tatic to get custody. If the story could leave out the murder mystery, this would be a fine low intensity family film.

Along with Forever Together and Christmas In My Hometown, I rate this as the best of the early Trachtenberg features that I have, so far. I do not like to compare these with the series Pete, Pete and Buffy.

Forever Together as romantic Tracht. I rate it as the pinnacle, but the low budget is fairly obvious.

A Father's Choice is also low budget, but that does not show to such an extent. Here she is a disillusioned early teen whose reality is gradually becoming less putrid. It is quality, as is Forever, just it is not big budget type quality but a quality story.

My DVD is 4x3 NTSC.

I was lucky enough to be attending Bow Valley College (Airdrie Campus) at the time they were there to film the court scenes of the movie (BVC Airdrie campus is attached to the Airdrie Courthouse). Even better, I was given permission to job shadow the set designer and mingle with all the cast! Peter Strauss is very nice (and a bit of a prankster who kept pulling faces at the camera and making the director roll his eyes). I liked the movie, unfortunately I never got a chance to videotape it when it came on television since I did not have a vcr at the time, but I did get to keep an autographed copy of the movie script (somewhere in my packed boxes in storage).