Rather pointlessly set in the Seventies, this is a merciless tear-jerker about the daughter (Anna Chlumsky) of an undertaker, and her 12th summer. A hypochondriac tomboy with a crush on her English teacher, she finds her world crashing down when her widower father (Dan Aykroyd) takes on a beautician (Jamie Lee Curtis) to make up the corpses' faces, and falls in love with her. The plot is slightly stiffened by the girl's aged grandma, who never says anything, but occasionally bursts vigorously into song, and by her friendship with a bespectacled schoolmate (Macaulay Culkin), who's very down-to-earth despite his fragile appearance. The film constantly strives not to be dull, but never quite succeeds, the dialogue needing to be sharper to make up for the lack of variety in the plot. But only the hardest of hearts will resist its massive attack on the tear-ducts in the last 20 minutes. Performances are OK.

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