Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

The first must-see film of the year.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

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.

This exceptionally fine film, with a cast of major star players, offers an insider's view of a large family's reaction to an autistic brother. Their daily affairs, from early childhood embarrassments to adult empathy, is held in a stranglehold by the guilt-ridden mother, Angelica Huston. The father, played by the solid Sam Neill, descends from non-acceptance of his son's disability to escaping in mid-life crises. Overall, his strong characterization reflects a true dilemma, unfortunately, affecting his wife and other five children. His daughter, Kyra Sedgwick, and other son, Dermot Mulroney turn in major performances as flawed and undervalued family members. Much of the exposition seems like Greek Tragedy among the various players. The final resolution brings everyone around, but may not be realistic in the end.

**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.

Having autistic children myself has left me with very high standards for film treatments of this disorder, but I have never seen a movie that infuriated and insulted me more than this one. Every family relationship in this movie is fake, and the focus is entirely on the mother, played by Anjelica Huston, not on the autistic son, Randall. His problem only exists in so far as it affects her - he is handicapped, she suffers; the strain turns her husband to womanizing, and she suffers; husband leaves, son turns violent and has to be sent away, and she suffers. It's easy to see who is the star in this family, and who deserves all our pity and consideration. In addition to the phony family dynamics, there are simple matters of everyday life that don't add up. A family splits up and one of the members is severely handicapped, but this doesn't seem to affect anyone financially at all - dad just moves to his own apartment, and mom and the kids keep living the life of southern planters in a big old Victorian house; she doesn't even have to go to work, not even when Randall is instutionalized in a fine (and therefore expensive) school where he finally learns to eat normally and communicate. Once the problem child is out of the way, dad returns home and everything is peachy again, and nobody seems to find this the least bit disgusting, or think such a gutless husband and father is perhaps not worth having.It's the ending, though, that really left me outraged; once Randall is run over by a car and killed, mom in a great burst of feminist liberation shouts "I'm free! I'm free!" kicks dad out and divorces him, and out of nowhere embarks upon a successful and satisfying career as a theatrical scene painter. Turns out that despite her devotion to her handicapped son, she always saw him as a total lost cause and never loved him as much as she did her normal children. Thank goodness he does the right thing at last and dies so that she can get on with doing what she wants with her much more important life. This is a selfish "do your own thing" screed masquerading as a serious look at a serious disability, and I found it utterly disgusting. There was only one good thing about it, and that was the performance of Dermott Mulroney as the older brother, Mack. He was realistic and rough-edged, and was the only real person in the entire movie.