I'll start right out by saying that the role of Allyson played by Sarah Drew almost made us walk out of the picture after about the first fifteen minutes. Written and performed as a whining, woe-is-me character to the point where you just want to reach In and smack her, it was almost more than we could bear. What it all boiled down to was a pathetic 'mom' wallowing around in self-pity and a passel of kids desperately in need of discipline. Doesn't anyone actually look at these films before they are released and say to themselves, in this case, "This is way too irritating to sit and watch."? If not, they should. However, as it turned out, the role of Bones played by Trace Adkins was worth sticking around to see. He was terrific. In fact, he made the movie. Patricia Heaton as Sondra was also pretty good. Sean Astin was so lovable as Sam Gamgee in The Hobbit, and he's lovable this time around, too. But there really isn't much for him to work with here. All in all, it was beyond refreshing to see a picture without all the gratuitous foul language, scummy behavior and in your face sex that far too many movies throw at us anymore in place of decent writing, but this picture could also have used some better writing – and editing. Bottom line, I've seen worse movies – but I've also seen a ton of better ones.
