Big Girls Don't Cry... They Get Even

Precocious adolescent Laura (Wolf), who remonstrates straight to camera and consoles herself from a miniature book of quotes (Thoreau, etc), is related to half of California through multiple marriages. Fed up, she is the hub of this entirely predictable ensemble piece. There are those with whom she lives: couture-obsessed mom (Whitton) and her clone stepdaughter; pint-sized 'GI Joe' stepbrother (Teigen); neglectful stepdad (Strathairn). And those with whom she doesn't, including estranged man-child dad (Dunne, excellent as usual), temporarily shacked up with a winsome air-head hippy (Shelly), and favourite stepbrother Josh (Futterman). The extended family finally all meet up in a wood cabin by a lake for a Big Chill-out, awaiting Laura's return from an attempted runaway. Directed by numbers, this continues a sad decline which has taken Joan Micklin Silver from Hester Street through Loverboy to this.