Dir: Sharon von Wietersheim
Star: Timothy Dalton, Nastassja Kinski, Kevin Zegers, Cameron Finley

I hated this exercise in anti-intellectualism with a vengeance, based as it is on the apparent principle that being an asshole is much more preferable to being smart. For, make no mistake, the former is exactly what Matt Farragher (Dalton) is, despite painfully obvious efforts to paint him as the “fun Dad”. I think the signature moment was, when waiting with his kids in their car to board a ferry, he suddenly decides he can’t be bothered to queue any more, and whizzes down along the outside. No, sir, that does not make you a wild and wacky guy. It makes you an asshole.

They are on the way to Balboa Island for a couple of weeks’ vacation. He doesn’t see much of his kids, being separated from their mother, who is an archaeologist off in Peru or something – he’s a chef, working seven days a week in his restaurant. [Again: you’re an asshole. You have kids, their upbringing should take precedence ahead of your career goals, rather than making your mother take care of them, as Matt does] However, their time-share turns out to have been double-booked, with the Weiland family. The mother there, Julia (Kinski) is a genetic scientist with a very structured approach to child-rearing, and who is also engaged to one of her work colleagues. She was also one of the people cut off by Matt’s shenanigans in the ferry queue, so they don’t like each other much.

You can probably guess where the rest of this ABC Family TV movie, originally screened in June 2000, is going. And you’d be right, if you guess the initial antagonism between Julia and Matt is going to end up turning into tolerance, and eventual love, Julia spurning the more serious-minded intentions of her current fiance, literally at the altar, for the “informality” of life with Matt. Including, presumably, his severely dickish tendencies. Really, I lost the will to live by this point, watching Matt’s goonish, occasionally borderline stalkery tendencies, which have not aged well over the 15 years since this came out. Whether it’s trying to talk Julia into letting him sleep with her, on the childish pretext of him being scared of a thunderstorm, or acting particularly creepy after a case of mistaken identity (below), it’s painful to watch. That whirring sound you hear, is James Bond, spinning in his grave.

It’s a bit of an unusual, intellectual role for Nastassja, playing a scientist – albeit one of the more attractive kind. She doesn’t disgrace herself or seem out of her depth, unlike certain actors and actresses I could mention (I’m thinking Denise Richards, nuclear physicist, in The World Is Not Enough; or, for equal opportunity purposes, Charlie Sheen, radio astronomer, in The Arrival). While certainly not the first time she has played a mother – I suppose, technically, To The Devil a Daughter was her first such role! – her family here is a good deal more functional than, say, Little Boy Blue or The Magic of Marciano. Sure, she’s a little neurotic and what would in modern terms be called a “helicopter parent”, always hovering over her offspring. But that’s perhaps preferable to Matt’s approach, which borders on neglect: “hey, if I lose these kids, I can always have some more.” It might have been interesting to contrast those two approaches, and how their kids turn out – if my own parenting is any indication, they’ll be fine, almost regardless of what you do!

But, no. This is a drippily predictable slab of PG-rated romance, interspersed with occasional moments of non-threatening dramatic tension, such as when two of the kids steal a sailboat – Matt obviously sucking at teaching the whole “personal responsibility” thing as well – and have to be rescued by the Coast Guard. The only person I really feel much sympathy for in all this, is Julia’s fiance who, while certainly engrossed in his job, doesn’t deserve to be dumped at the altar, in favor of the aging Lothario who is Mr. Farragher. This isn’t really any reflection on Dalton or Kinski or even the director: blame for this cringeworthy mess sits squarely on the shoulders of writer Eric Tuchman, who script fails to pass muster, even by the low standards of ABC Family television movies.

I thunk what irritated me most was the shallow reduction of the characters to stereotypes. Nobody here seemed like a real individual: no-one actually behaves like they do here. Obviously, this is the movies, so some slack needs to be cut, since films would be short and dull if people behaved sensibly [“The house is screaming GET OUT at us? Maybe we should, y’know, leave?”] But nor do they exhibit the same one-note tendencies which flood this film. Even the most serious person has moments of levity, and that works the other way too, not that you’d know it from this televisual treat. When the players and their actions both seem as contrived as here, occurring entirely for the purposes of a plot so obvious, you can see exactly where it’s going inside less than 10 minutes, there’s little or no incentive to watch. If it wasn’t for Kinski’s luminescent presence, I’d have changed channels before the first commercial break.