Young Viveka Davis seems to be the perfect daughter for a seemingly really nice family, but no family with teenagers comes out unscathed. It takes more than just one night out with her not usual crowd for Davis's parents (George Segal and Stockard Channing) to see what Davis is hiding, and this results in Davis being placed in programs and halfway houses in efforts to get off the stuff. At times, this seems like something you'd see on an 80's after-school special which dealt with issues like this, and throughout there are all sorts of cliches and melodramatic dialog that makes this barely at times seem barely above an exploitation movie made decades before.
The teenagers in the programs presented mainly look far too clean cut to represent the stereotypical teen drug addict, all middle or upper class, from private schools, and surprisingly all white. The monologues of those suffering from addiction range from over-the-top to shockingly realistic, with outbursts from a few participants rather forced, abd a lot of the film comes offas finger waggjng and preachy, treating this kind of rehabilitation as some kind weird cult. Channing and Segal really don't get to do all that much, so the film at times seems like a complete waste of their talents. Davis is better than expected, surprisingly good for an actor I never saw in anything else. This could have been so much better, but a frequently laughable script and poor direction prevents that.
The teenagers in the programs presented mainly look far too clean cut to represent the stereotypical teen drug addict, all middle or upper class, from private schools, and surprisingly all white. The monologues of those suffering from addiction range from over-the-top to shockingly realistic, with outbursts from a few participants rather forced, abd a lot of the film comes offas finger waggjng and preachy, treating this kind of rehabilitation as some kind weird cult. Channing and Segal really don't get to do all that much, so the film at times seems like a complete waste of their talents. Davis is better than expected, surprisingly good for an actor I never saw in anything else. This could have been so much better, but a frequently laughable script and poor direction prevents that.