Family Weekend
| Family Weekend | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Benjamin Epps |
| Written by | Matt K. Turner |
| Starring |
Kristin Chenoweth Matthew Modine Olesya Rulin Joey King Eddie Hassell Shirley Jones |
Release dates | March 29, 2013 |
Running time | 106 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Family Weekend is a 2011 small-budget Indie Comedy directed by Benjamin Epps and starring Kristin Chenoweth, Matthew Modine, Olesya Rulin, Joey King, Eddie Hassell, and Shirley Jones.
Plot
Emily (Olesya Rulin) is a speed rope-jumping champion of her school and general overachiever. She is praised by one love-lorn boy at school (though she is mocked by other students) for her achievements, but her family does not care about her jump roping success. On Friday, Emily wins the regional championship in speed rope-jumping and moves on to the state championship to be held the coming weekend. She looks at the audience only to find nobody from her family cheering for her. She confronts her family at home during a family dinner, but her mother, father, brother and sister all continue to be wrapped up in themselves and ignore her plea to take her jump-roping seriously.
Inspired by an Animal Planet segment her semi-autistic younger brother is watching on treating "Tasmanian devils" for a kind of cancer by sedating the creatures so treatment can be administered, in a desperate attempt to bring the family back together, Emily secretly drugs her parents with her mother's sedatives, then binds each of them to a chair. She manages to hold them until Sunday morning with help from her siblings, grandmother, and a frenemy school friend who is a neighbor. During the weekend, she attempts to teach her parents how to parent. While her father soon succumbs to Stockholm Syndrome and wrongly praises her, her mother still unconvinced scolds her often. After an emotional one-to-one with her mother that brings tears from Emily, she ultimately succeeds in both bringing her parents back together and causing all the members of the family to realize that everyone in the family is important and needs support.
By the time the police show up Sunday morning due to videos her frenemy neighbor had put online about the kidnapping, her parents and the neighbor have changed their attitudes and help Emily escape to get to the state finals. During her jump competition, all her family finally appear at the championship to cheer her. She momentarily stops jumping when she sees her family, but still wins second place. The police also show up and apprehend her for having attacked her mother's coworker/faux-boyfriend at her home who had inadvertently interrupted her kidnapping plot.
The film ends with Emily finishing her sentence at a youth correctional camp and her family coming to bring her back home. The plot and dialogue throughout is realistic but also played for laughs.
Cast
- Olesya Rulin as Emily Smith-Dungy
- Kristin Chenoweth as Samantha Smith-Dungy
- Matthew Modine as Duncan Dungy
- Joey King as Lucinda Smith-Dungy
- Eddie Hassell as Jackson Smith-Dungy
- Shirley Jones as GG
- Chloe Bridges as Kat
Critical reception
It has a 36% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 17 reviews.[1] Family Weekend on Netflix has received more than 414,000 ratings with an average rating of 3.8, making it one of the most highly watched as well as highly rated Indie Comedies on Netflix ever.
The New York Times published a review saying the film's "hollow flirtation with subversion amount to airplane pablum".[2] Other reviews were much more positive.
References
- ↑ Rotten Tomatoes
- ↑ Andy Webster, Is Domestic Bliss Too Much to Ask?, The New York Times,