Terror in the Family

This movie is an alright TV movie. Nothing spectacular but I could watch it again.

Hilary Swank plays a teen who becomes aggressive and violent with her family. Between the constant bickering at home, and running away to spend time with her boyfriend, her life turns out to be more than she can handle.

Swank acts out the role very well but at times her character becomes a little too annoying to handle. Joanna Kerns plays the alcoholic mother who just can't seem to control her daughter as it seems like she's always the one getting knocked around. Kerns is believable as an alcoholic but tries to be a little too complex for her role. Dan Lauria plays the distant father. He acts a little better than Kerns and his character doesn't involve too many sentimental moments, so it's easier to handle him. Everyone else does a good job.

The plot is good but it tends to drag on a little too long. Half of the film could have been cut and it wouldn't have made a difference. After two or three scenes of seeing Swank become violent with her parents, I wanted to turn it off. But I didn't. The ending was alright but like I said, it dragged on and on.

Overall, this is a good TV movie. If you're in the situation like the family that the story revolves around, you might want to watch this.

If you're looking for a quality movie about a family and their problems, "Terror in the Family" is the one to see. It doesn't waste time, or sermonize, which is what a drama, especially one with this theme, should be. And it's never slow, either. Also, there's nothing new to it either. And it is predictable. Hence the title, the movie is about a teenager's behavior that is apparently influenced by her boyfriend. At the very end, it turns out it is. In case you haven't seen or heard of any of the actors here, almost the entire cast is made up of familiar faces: Hilary Swank, "Growing Pains" star Joanna Kerns, and "The Wonder Years" star Dan Lauria.

Grade: B+

Joanna Kerns, (Cynthia Martin) plays the role of a mother who loves her family and especially her daughter, Deena Martin (Hilary Swank) who has the hots for her boyfriend who is wild and drags Deena down the wrong way of life. However, Cynthia Martin loves to drink wine all day long and has trouble trying to deal with her husband who wants to make pottery in the basement all the time. In the meantime, Adam Martin, the son of Cynthia Martin loves to drink vodka from a bottle before he goes to sleep or when problems start to hit him in the face. The only sane person in this out of control family is Todd Martin, (Dan Lauria) who plays the role of the husband of this crazy family which needs professional help.

I was curious about this as an early credit for Hillary Swank, and if I were she and someone mentioned this movie in my presence I'd probably be thinking, "I'm a big movie star now, I've won two Academy Awards, I should be allowed to forget credits like that." Truth be told, though, it's a better than average Lifetime movie and Swank acquits herself marvelously in it as the rebellious teenage girl whose violent relations with her family open a lot of old wounds going back three generations. This has some of the usual Lifetime weaknesses — melodramatic plot construction, an overly reverential attitude towards psychotherapy, sappy piano-and-strings background music (they must have a library of millions of these records) and a limp excuse for punk rock allegedly performed by Garrett's band, as well as the obligatory soft-core porn scene — but it's also solidly acted by a tight ensemble cast, it's all too believable despite the melodramatics, and Gregory Goodell has a visual sense far ahead of most of the Lifetime directors.

Hilary Swank is obviously a very good actress, but her casting here presents a problem: as a rebellious suburban teen with an anger management problem, Swank isn't too convincing as a malicious liar and conniver. This pedantic TV-made drama hopes to show how some parents attempt to substitute personal problems or an estranged marriage by turning their kids into pals (instead of helping them become responsible people). It has many intense moments of family conflict, yet Swank is too clean-cut, too brainy and well-wrought as a person to match up with this mercurial character. As her parents, Joanna Kerns and Dan Lauria have some very fine scenes, but Kerns (playing an alcoholic) is given too many not-so-subtle "sipping her wine" close-ups, and this particular needy mom (whose own mother was abusive–-these patterns repeat!) isn't quite convincing either: she seems to go downhill awfully fast (after the obligatory 'fixing dinner' scenes) and her background and relationship with her sister is left too vague. The melodramatic music score is obtrusive and obnoxious, underlining every emotion to the nth-degree and signaling the traumas far in advance. However, for a television film the narrative is tight and, after a poor opening (including a tatty flashback frame, the kind that never works), the movie improves and does try to solve its dilemmas carefully without too much hand-holding.