Following Dad's death back East, Mum takes their 3 kids out to Gold Rush California to live in a tent. As you do. Oldest child California (played by a young Jena Malone) doesn't want to go, and also doesn't want to be named California, so renames herself Lucy. Soapy wild West stuff ensues.
Glenn Close heads the cast and produces, and Jena Malone is rather more conventional than she has been in her adult roles as feisty but unsettled Lucy. The locations are handsome, the production design is good, and the performances are all pretty solid, with some emotional stuff coming from Close and Malone.
But it's a bit episodic rather than narratively coherent, and it very much has a feel of a TV series rather than a film. Having said that, it is reliable family viewing notwithstanding a couple of moments which aren't appropriate for younger children.
Glenn Close heads the cast and produces, and Jena Malone is rather more conventional than she has been in her adult roles as feisty but unsettled Lucy. The locations are handsome, the production design is good, and the performances are all pretty solid, with some emotional stuff coming from Close and Malone.
But it's a bit episodic rather than narratively coherent, and it very much has a feel of a TV series rather than a film. Having said that, it is reliable family viewing notwithstanding a couple of moments which aren't appropriate for younger children.