Another “evil outsider in the family” film, along the lines of such recent offerings as The Crush and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, but less interesting. Curtis is painfully miscast as Jude Madigan, a wayward mother who three years previous left her husband Robert (Gallagher) and their three sons with neither a goodbye nor an explanation. Now she’s back (again without any sort of explanation) and none too happy about her husband’s pending marriage to Callie Harland (Whalley-Kilmer) and the state of her nonexistent marriage. It’s easy to tell from George S. Clinton’s mediocre scoring that all hell’s about to break loose, and when it does, it’s about as shocking as a firecracker on the Fourth. Curtis isn’t sure what to do with her role as a sociopathic mommy-come-lately; she grins the grins and tries her darnedest to look devious, but it’s just no good, she’s still the same old lovable Jamie Lee and the film sputters to a confusing halt a scant thirty minutes in. About the only spark here comes from Redgrave as Jude’s mother, and she’s barely onscreen for more than 10 minutes total. Luke Edwards as Kes, the son on whom Jude is fixated, looks and acts like he just graduated from the Edward Furlong School of Acting, but it’s not his fault, I think: there’s not much for him — or anyone, for that matter — to work with here. Most annoying of all is the complete and utter lack of any sort of background story for these characters. We never do find out why Jude left her family or why she’s gone so obviously mad in the interim. Vague hints of skeletons in the family closet are bandied about by Redgrave, but nothing comes of them. It’s all one big, silly, unexciting mess, and in the last 30 minutes, when the improbabilities begin to overshadow even Curtis’ hammy performance, you realize what an utterly boring film this really is, despite its “thriller” trappings. Killer mommies? Stick to John Waters.
This article appears in April 22 • 1994 (Cover).