Rich in Love

Another sub-literary Deep South coming- of-age snoozer, in which 17-year-old Lucille (Erbe) has a bit of growing up to do when Mom (Clayburgh) leaves to start 'a second life'. There's bullish paterfamilias Warren (Finney) to guide through the trauma of being on his own again, a task so time-consuming that Lucille has to put her own life (upcoming exams, tentative steps towards romance) on hold a while. Then the surprise return of vivacious, pregnant, married sister Rae (Amis) with her Yankee husband Billy (MacLachlan) livens up the whole household, particularly when that little glint in Billy's eye starts to do strange things to a girl's adolescent hormones. We've been here many times before, but rarely with such an unprepossessing junior heroine: Erbe's such a prissy li'l missy that the sympathy vacuum at its core kills the movie stone dead. For the rest, reuniting Beresford and writer Alfred Uhry from Driving Miss Daisy, it's all lengthy vaawel sounds, Charleston summer sun, Georges Delerue firmly in the key of saccharine, and absolutely no surprises.