Purely Joyful Movie!

Dreadfully Boring

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

I loved the book and was so excited to see the movie. I was impressed with the book to television adaptation. This movie was so dead-on with the casting. Each and every character was exactly as I imagined. The scenes with Randall, the strained family encounters, even the kitchen scenes were just right. Such small things have remained in my memory- like the shoes under the bed and the father distancing himself from the realities of what his family ended up being. Angelica Houston's portrayal of a divorced older woman was perfection. I have been looking for this movie on DVD and would love to see it again. This is a book I reread often.

I have two autistic children, one 'normal' as well. It is the lower functioning boy that I could see in this movie. The one who has a bolt on his door to lock him in there for OUR safety. The one that our lives revolve around. For me this movie hit home on many levels and I felt it was a better movie for focusing more on the effects on the family than solely on the autistic son Randall. He wasn't made into some sort of superhero savant who was going to by skill or chance save the day. He was a force of nature in their lives (Sam Neill says so when holding Randall's ashes, 'so light for such a force'). A force that permeated everything they did (the parents) and everything they became (the siblings). I related to many of the feelings and problems of both the parents. That the father started wanting to send the boy away when the problematic son was still young and the mother clings and refuses againsts all odd ... very, very real to my life. My rating is lowered slightly only for the length which could have been shorter (guess was a mini series originally and thought it should have been scaled back a bit) and if you are not an Angelica Huston fan (and I'm not) she can occasionally grate on you.Overall, I found this the most real of any movie on autism because it focused on more than just the quirks of autism as a device plot. It didn't bother me that the family was rich, it actually contrasted the reality of his problems against an even more ideal or perfect situation of having all you want - all you want except for your son to be normal.

I thought this was one of the most moving & original, as well as one of the best-acted teleplays, that I've seen in a long long time. Very moving. I'm not the mother of a disabled child so I can't speak to Anjelica Huston's portrayal as the mother, but I felt sympathetic to her. I also felt sympathetic to the father's position, which proves the strength of this teleplay. You get to see all sides and no one was judged; everyone, including the children of the couple, are just set forth in all their good and bad points. It's a pretty remarkable story, in that these people seem real -- it's not some adaptation of a Danielle Steel fantasy; these people could be your neighbors. I really appreciated that this is fairly true adaptation of the book, as well. I recommend this to anyone who wants to see great acting all around, and a story that's realistically portrayed.

**May Contain SPOILERS**Family Pictures is about a so called perfect family. David and Lainie Eberlin and their three children Liddie, Mack and Randall living the American dream in the '50s. David is a successful psychiatrist and Lainie a homemaker. Their world is turned upside down when it is determined that their youngest, Randall, is autistic. This is in the days when theories regarding autism were rather archiac. David being a psychiatrist believes the theory that the child was rejected in the womb. Lainie responds to the sad news by promptly becoming pregnant with three more children, daughters in three years. Their father refers to them as the last straws. The story is told from the oldest of the last straws, Nina's perspective. The family is disfunctional with mom drinking too much and dad having affairs. Randall is out of control at times but always cared for and protected by Lainie. This leaves Nina feeling that her mother loves him more than the rest of her children, to whom she refers to as her perfect babies. The children grow up with various problems, the story centers mainly on Nina and Mack. Mack is an shiftless alcoholic with a bond to his brother. Nina has self esteem issues and relationship difficulties.I enjoyed the movie and the book because no family is perfect and this family's problems seemed very real. Nina was able to understand herself after coming to terms with her parents and understanding their pain so long ago.