In America this goes by the jaw-breakingly terrible title of Big Girls Dont Cry . . . They Get Even, but whatever its called its a barking dog. Mixed-up kid Laura (Wolf) clues the audience in on her complicated family life in a direct-to-the-camera narration so lumberingly inelegant that it throws into sharp relief the comparatively light-handed and witty use of the device in Wayne's World.
Lauras parents have both divorced and remarried, Mom (Margaret Whitton) to a superficial yuppie (David Strathairn) who already has a bunch of mixed-up brats of his own, and Dad (Dunne) to a decent schoolteacher (Patricia Kalember) upon whom he has fathered an adorable tot before moving on to a hippie Lady Penelope lookaline (Shelly) and impregnating her with twins.
Understandably the extended family is in an emotional state perhaps because theyre constantly forced to listen to the excruciating parade of MOR rock duds on the soundtrack and things get worse when Laura runs away to the mountains to be with her already runaway stepbrother (Dan Futterman) and the whole crowd descend on a lakeland campsite to sort things out.
Obviously, this bunch of rich white folks cant have any real problems so the film has to drag out a clutch of silly little arguments that can be easily and horrifyingly resolved with an all-round hugging session in the last reel, plus some discreet rearranging of the domestic arrangements to ensure that everyone past puberty has paired off with an ideal partner. Dragged out to a punitive 104 minutes, this finds Joan Micklin Silver who used to make excellent little films like Hester Street, Between The Lines and Crossing Delancey floundering badly, with a likable and talented cast.