Parenthood (1989)

A large St. Louis family struggles with marriage and parenting issues: a sales executive (Steve Martin) and his wife (Mary Steenburgen) with three small children, a single mother (Dianne Wiest in an Oscar nominated performance) raising a rebellious teenage daughter (Martha Plimpton) and a secretive son (Joaquin Phoenix), a father (Rick Moranis) obsessed with pushing his pre-school daughter to her intellectual limits and the cantankerous family patriarch (Jason Robards) who gets a rude awakening when his black sheep son (Tom Hulce) returns home. Directed by Ron Howard (APOLLO 13), this is one of his better films although not without some painfully hokey moments like Moranis serenading his schoolteacher wife (Harley Jane Kozak) with a Burt Bacharach song in front of her class. The best parts of the movie show the difficulty of trying to raise children under the pressure of contemporary society which isn't often conducive to a healthy environment. The worst parts are when Howard opts for sentimental hokum rather than the grimmer facts of life. The movie ends all warm and fuzzy with Randy Newman's woolly score cueing the audience to get misty eyed. On the plus side is the ensemble cast who work very hard to give weight to the often tenuous script. With Keanu Reeves, Dennis Dugan and Helen Shaw.