There aren't many degrees of light and shade about this pretty miserable little piece about a 10-year-old boy's first traumatic year in a new home after the death of his mother - a pretty jolting experience in itself as she died in a car crash after storming out in a row. The theme is lightened a little by the fact that the father (DeVito) of the boy and his three-year-old brother is the black-lipped host of the late-night horror show on TV, and is always `on' for the local kids. What little comedy there is, however, is soon firmly squashed under the heel of tragedy. The father is drinking heavily to forget, and the family falls out with the local Nazi (Sinise) and pays the penalty when he finds ways to blacken their lives. Just occasionally the feeling of community is captured, and there's a tensely exciting bit towards the end when the older boy is threatened with extinction at the hands of the bad guy. Not terribly involving though: the cast probably sheds more tears in this one than the audience will.

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