Down Will Come Baby

Robin's parents Leah and Marcus are always fighting. Leah is too devoted to her job, and now she has a chance at a promotion that will require the family to move from Phoenix to Denver. Marcus wants to continue his career as an architect at the company he works for.

Robin doesn't really want to go to summer camp, but she does anyway hoping it will help things will get better between her parents. She seems happy enough and she makes friends with Amelia, who is quite shy and behaves strangely. Amelia, whose widowed mother is quite controlling, wishes she had Robin's situation. Robin learns to appreciate that her parents really do love her.

After a tragedy, Robin becomes quite depressed, but she soon feels better. One reason is her new friend Dorothy, who she meets in the park. Soon Dorothy has moved into the building. Leah has moved to Denver and is coming home periodically, so Dorothy becomes sort of a substitute mother, which doesn't please Leah one bit.

Dorothy is friendly at first but later starts behaving strangely.

This movie had a pleasant, family-drama tone most of the time, though it occasionally detoured into creepy and, by the end, creepy and frightening became the rule rather than the exception. I found it quite entertaining.

Diana Scarwid did an outstanding job, maintaining a pleasant facade and rarely showing that she had a disturbing side--at least not until close to the end, when she effectively played the wacko. I would compare her performance to Anthony Hopkins in "Silence of the Lambs"--one comment I heard about Hopkins in that movie was that he was scary precisely because he wasn't scary. Of course Hopkins is a much better actor, but the comparison still applies.

Evan Rachel Wood came across as quite appealing. She handled friendly, depressed and scared quite well and I really liked the Rachel character. Meredith Baxter was good as always--at least for a TV-movie.

The primary lesson here is that no parent should be overly focused on a career. I'm old-fashioned enough to say no mother, but even fathers shouldn't ignore their children.

This was good, for a TV-movie.