V.C. Andrews' Landry Family (TV Series) V.C. Andrews' Ruby (2021) User Reviews

trashy

[SnoopyStyle · 6/10 · 19 April 2021]

Ruby Landry (Raechelle Banno) is born and raised in the Louisiana bayou with her beloved Grandmère Catherine. Her mother died in childbirth. Catherine tells her a shocking secret. She cannot be with her boyfriend Paul Tate because he is her half-brother. Her mother and his father had an affair. On her death bed, Catherine reveals one final secret. Ruby has a twin sister. She runs away after her grandpa tries to sell her. She sets off to find her father Pierre Dumas (Gil Bellows). She finds that her twin Gisselle is a spoiled rich girl and Gisselle's boyfriend Beau is more interested in her.

There is a lot of rushing in the early expositions from Grandmère which left me a little confused about the father and Ruby's birth. Ignoring all that, this is fine pulpy melodrama worthy of the V. C. Andrews name. It touches on incest and convoluted family history and voodoo and all the melodrama. It's trashy. It's not for everyone. If one is looking for trash, this is what it is.

If you've seen the Dollanganger series, you've seen this

[billsoccer · 6/10 · 12 April 2021]

I barely made it through the Dollanganger series (Flowers in the Attic, Petals on the Wind, If there be Thorns and Seeds of Yesterday) and am going to skip the rest of this series (Landry). The plot is similar - a waif makes it out of her horrible family and finds other family and happiness, makes hew own mistakes, etc. The acting and dialogue is not good. Naomi Judd lent her name to this and gets 5 minute of screen time! The plot line is poor. Did the author just write variations on the same theme??

NOT AUTHENTIC

[boydc-26469 · 1/10 · 28 March 2021]

No accent, the music is louder than the actors voices and it didn't have a southern sound. It had the same vibe as all the other lifetime movies....bad acting, bad directing, music too loud. Worse than a B movie. I remember the older lifetime movies. I looked forward to watching those...and watching the reruns. These movies today are just not good. You people...I'm glad you can't ruin the books like you have ruined ALL of V C Andrews' books.

Suprised

[tpmh1969 · 8/10 · 28 March 2021]

I saw ads for the V. C. Andrews movies on Lifetime so I thought I'd watch out of sheer boredom and running out of things to watch honestly. I don't normally watch Lifetime movies but I've always loved V. C. Andrews. This was campy and I totally get into campy. I surprisingly got wrapped up into this one and I'm now watching Pearls in the Mist.

Really disappointed

[nzbanchee · 2/10 · 25 March 2021]

The movie does not match the book. So much has been changed, and they've left out vital parts of the story. The acting is terrible and awkward. It's disappointing as this series of v c andrews books is my favorite.

Separate it from the book, and it's....watchable

[CranberriAppl · 3 April 2021]

I've seen all the series that Lifetime has done on the "VC Andrews" books. The movies, NONE of them really capture the books. Really don't know why Lifetime bothered if they weren't going to develop them into the drama-filled, angsty, gothic, mysterious family sagas that they are. Heaven is my favorite, along w/Ruby, and the Casteel movies were a disaster.

This movie is fine if you ignore the book. They have a good cast and I think Ruby as well as Giselle are decent actresses. I like that they actually used real twins bc they have true chemistry as sisters. I read that they're identical, but in the same way that if you look at Mary Kate and Ashley long enough, you can figure out who is who. There are a lot of familiar faces in this. Nothing in this movie says Louisiana and New Orleans except for the fact that they keep saying both. No accents, no music, nothing. That's disappointing because it would have added some authenticity. All of the movies go from event to event, so the movies seem like a bunch of scenes filmed and pieced together. I do think the movie told a story, but it didn't really flesh out much.

There's not much to say because there's no point in comparing it to the books since we know how Lifetime rolls. But it's a watchable 90 minutes. Watching Pearl in the Mist next.

Page Turner/ Suspenseful

[taralynhuber · 8/10 · 22 March 2021]

I have never read the books but as far as the movie goes it's really well done. There are so many layers to this it's almost like a trilogy but there is actually one more episode. So it's a four episode mini series. The weird thing is though if you didn't know you might actually think it was the end. The end of the series or always in a good way. But you know there has to be more answers to secrets of Ruby. I absolutely love the relationship between Ruby and Beau. I hate the relationship between her and her sister Giselle! The rags to riches story and some interesting things in between. Very American gothic type. I highly recommend this movie to anyone.

Zero substance, very disappointing.

[jane-ann-cox · 1/10 · 29 March 2021]

The series it's based on was my favorite VC Andrews series, so I expected more from this. There was very little character development in the film, which may be what led to the lackluster performances. It seemed like someone just compiled a bullet list of major plot points and presented each event with just a few lines of flat dialogue, one after another. The setting could have been better utilized, too, with the bayou and New Orleans providing more mood/atmosphere and giving it the Southern Gothic feel that was present in the books.

Bad

[staciarose20 · 3/10 · 29 March 2021]

Painfully bad, and I hate to leave bad reviews, but the acting is terrible. Naomi Judd shouldn't have been chosen as the grandma.

Pretty bad, waste of time .

[rebeccamandia · 18 April 2021]

Pretty bad, waste of time. Didn't realize I had come to the end of the movie until I saw a bunch of new characters that followed.

Melodrama at it best

[skpn123 · 10/10 · 16 May 2021]

So many issues are teased in this the first movie of the series and I loved the slow build accompanied by plents of action and sass.

What I really love about this series from Number 1 to 4 is the female leads who are both vulnerable and invincible.

But please do not watch this if you are going to take it seriously. Because it is a creepy soap opera from beginning to end but it is gloriously captivating.

Absolutely horrible

[patrickwgreen · 1/10 · 28 March 2021]

This is a waste of time. Don't bothering. The acting is REALLY bad. The storyline is so out there. I rather watch The Room three time in a row rather then this.

Terrible!

[dshirlyn-1 · 3/10 · 29 March 2021]

I did not expect much so I guess I wasn't disappointed. The casting was awful and so was the acting, The plot was a bit much even though it's based on a novel. The actors look too old then too young as the series progresses.

Disappointing

[kathleensheridan-33477 · 1/10 · 30 March 2021]

One of the worst movie adaptation from a book I've ever had the misjudgment in watching. The acting was horrible and the plot was scattered. Missed opportunities of show casing the Louisiana culture & landscapes.

Lifetime movies just keeps getting worse.

[tiffanyhuggins-58151 · 2/10 · 27 March 2021]

I rarely ever watch any Lifetime movies, or the channel in general but I saw the commercials for this movie, Ruby, and it looked really interesting. I thought maybe Lifetime was upgrading their content. However, sadly the commercials make this movie look much better and more interesting than it actually is. Why can't Lifetime ever at least have decent actors?? The acting in Ruby is bad, like I've seen high school plays with more convincing actor's, bad. Seriously, is it a money thing with Lifetime that they only ever have cheesy, campy, content, with terrible acting and paper thin plots? This first movie was a little more plot heavy but it's hard to focus on anything when the acting is making you cringe every two minutes, not that the they had much to work with but still. I haven't watched the other movies in this series and I won't. This is what I get for watching the Lifetime channel in the first place.

Not horrible, but more could have been done!

[aprha · 2/10 · 28 March 2021]

The Ruby series by VC Andrews are my favorite by her! I was so excited when I saw the movies being made, but I think so much was just left out, which makes me really sad because the books have brought me so much joy!!!!

I have to say the actor who plays Paul Tate should absolutely earn an award for his performance!!!!

cringe

[sneakychicken · 2/10 · 28 August 2021]

I haven't read the books but the movie is kinda awful. The script is really bad, lots of very poor acting, characters appear shallow & unlikable and the storyline is all over the place. Took me a while to understand that the movie is set in the 60s due to some poor fashion choices. The whole incest thingy seems like a questionable plot choice. An extra bonus cringe is the part in the beginning where they took static images of the house and tried to make a 3D camera spin effect using perspective distortion. Besides that, I just can't figure out what audience this is for. It doesn't just look dated, but also feels like a very cliche 90s melodrama - does anyone watch those anymore?

A disappointment....

[deesirius · 3/10 · 5 February 2023]

I was absolutely excited to watch the Landry series. As a huge VC Andrews fan and as someone who grew up reading these books in secret in my high school library, i was excited to learn that Lifetime had acquired the entire VC collection. A collection i also own in my libraries.

But this Lifetime series was BAD. So Incredibly cringe worthy i almost couldnt get through the first movie and im wondering if i should push through to see my childhood books come to life and watch the other 3.

My expectations are never high with lifetime movies...you have to suspend your disbelief quite alot. But i was expecting to be entertained none the less and was even glad to learn they hired actual twins, i was wondering how they were gonna pull that off. The actors who play the twins are not dreadful...but the rest of the cast was so wooden it was hard to get into the story.

I expected so much more after watching the Heaven series, which i thought was pretty decent. And the actors chosen for "flowers in the attic Origins" (aka garden of shadows) was very decent and i thoroughly enjoyed the 4 part series. With the landry series, everything was cheapened from the get go, the costumes, the accents, the actors...

Lifetime reallly let me down with this and after watching the dollangangers and the casteels i was hoping they would find their groove.

Boudreaux & Clotilde would give dis fo' (4) tums down, chér'!

[mldardar · 3/10 · 9 April 2021]

What a disappointment! I had plans to watch all 4 Ruby movies. But couldn't even get to the first 5 minutes of this! Bayous, swamp, moss-covered Cypress, a traiteur but no Cajun accent!

I knew when Ruby first mentions "Grand-mère" in the intro, neither the cast nor director had put one foot in Cajun country nor any of Louisiana's bayou country before starting filming.

I was raised in the state, & although the city I was raised in had a closer connection with New Orleans, it's surrounded by Cajun towns, & I worked with many. We called my grandmothers "mon mon", like "maw maw" with more nasal (French) sound. I was anxious to hear Grand-mere (Naomi Judd) speak. Same Kentucky accent, that no traiteur (healer) raised & living "in the bayou" would have. Besides them, Ruby's boyfriend (?), Paul who asked if she was going to the "fais do do dance", had no hint of the accent a boy raised there would have. He also didn't need to say "dance", after asking her if she was going to the "fais do do".

I stopped it after the scene of the couple buying preserves from Catherine (Naomi Judd), when the man said her preserves were the best in the bayou, in his stereotypical non-Cajun Southern accent.

For the record: In South & Southwest Louisiana, & even below New Orleans, you'll hear various French accents. People in northern Louisiana, beginning at Baton Rouge speak like other southerners. In the New Orleans area, the typical accents sound closer to New Jersey/Brooklyn. I worked with a woman from New Jersey, who said people were always asking her if she was from Chalmette, which is east of downtown N. O. in St. Bernard Parish.

This movie would only appeal to people who know nothing about the location & time, or Louisianians who are ashamed of the accent, hopefully there aren't many.

I'm not a never Lifetime viewer. I often enjoyed some Lifetime movies I used to watch with one of my aunts. And more recently I enjoyed the 5 V. C. Andrews novel-based movies about Heaven Leigh Casteel. Definitely not Oscar-worthy, but enjoyable. But I have no idea if they were authentic to the location the stories took place. Ruby is not even close.

Waste of time and brain cells

[crazycatlady-15088 · 1/10 · 26 April 2022]

Just don't bother! This is about as Southern down on the bayou as the movies clueless or meangirls. Just horrible! What a waste of time and brain cells. Nothing interesting it was like a teenie bopper series that was all over the place but made sure it touched on all PC points. The acting was horrible. I could've done better with my cell phone and a few friends and what is sad is I'm not even joking.