PG-13, 1 hr. 33 min. Directed By:
Jeffrey Bloom. Release Date:
Nov 20, 1987. DVD Release
Date: Apr 24, 2001.
When I was a kid, this movie made
infrequent appearances in my life. More
than once, I heard my mother tell me it was “inappropriate” when it popped up
on TV, and I heard kids whisper about it… those kids that had mothers that were
far cooler than mine. That actually
seemed to be most kids. Twenty-some odd
years later, I’m wondering what the hell was so inappropriate. I know the content of the book, but I’ve
never read it because, well, I suspect I’m the wrong gender to be really
attracted to anything V.C. Andrews writes.
The book was probably inappropriate for ten-year-old me, but the
movie? Not so much.
Every once in a while, I run in to a
character that I’d like to punch until they stop twitching. Flowers
in the Attic is blessed with at least three such characters: the grandmother, the mother, and Kristy Swanson’s
character, which in my mind is kind of a direct step up from her portrayal of
Buffy Summers. This trio is really the
film’s high point, as there wasn’t a whole lot else to really talk about. Without the… kind of forced incest and
physical abuse that I’ve heard has been described in the book, this story was
more than a little dull. Don’t get me
wrong, it’s terrible what happens to these four kids. But, it wasn’t enough to power a feature
length film, and none of the cast except for Louise Fletcher, who seems way too
comfortable in her role. Even then, it’s
not the world’s best performance.
I’m wondering if my dislike stems
from what I’d heard about the movie, and the controversy that surrounded its
presence in my life. It’s not fair, but
frequently with these older movies, the hype created by a movie causes more
problems than it solves. That hype has
killed lots of movies for me, and this is just the latest.
You can avoid this in its entirety. There are no great performances, no great
lines, and what feels like an eternity of Kristy Swanson voice emoting. I wish I’d known all this in retrospect, so I
could have dodged this movie.
