Wolff rating: MOSTLY HARMLESS
Plot summary: In this wild twist on ``The River Wild,'' a family of four with manufactured life problems finds themselves dragged into some bank robbers' plans while camping in the North Woods.
Biased, pithy comments: Oh, Laura Holt, what have you become? It's hard to really get up a lot of hate for a TV movie like this (although it clearly has aspirations not to be one). This is one of those movies where you see the hero and heroine playing casually with bows and arrows and firing a musket (who has a musket sitting around?) such that we aren't suprised when this becomes a plot element later on. This is also one of those movies that implies that rank tragedy and unrepentant killing will draw a family closer together, rather than create severe mental problems. It's not an utterly incompetent movie; there are no glaring continuity errors or flubbed dialog, although the motivations of the criminals are strictly there to service the boring character advancement of ``Remington Steele'''s Zimbalist deciding to shoot arrows first and ask questions later. There are so many better movies with exactly this same concept that it's hard to justify even tuning this one in (unless, like me, you're programming away on a lonely Saturday night, at which point you have bigger problems).
Other Notes: Better movies include ``The River Wild'' and ``Deliverance'', and a realistic look at what happens when this kind of craziness takes place is ``The Abduction of Kari Swenson'' about real-life Olympic skier who was kidnapped by mountain men. Actually, the book written by Swenson's mother about the whole thing is absorbing, and a damn sight better than this.
How many times I have seen it: x1
Starring: Stephanie Zimbalist, Tom Butler, Brendan Fletcher, Sarah Chalke.
Directed by: Stuart Cooper