The late Robert Urich might have become an actor of substance and quality (and, perhaps, a great dramatic resource) if he hadn't spent so much of his time on TV shows and in sub-standard TV movies. This quasi-camp melodrama, an adaptation of Carol Donahue and Shirley Hall's book "Deadly Relations: A True Story of Murder in a Suburban Family", wobbles unsteadily between fruity soap opera and suburban horror, with a laughable music score that flares up like Nino Rota's "Godfather Theme" whenever director Bill Condon needs the tension to escalate. Seems a well-to-do war vet and family man discovers the best way to make money is to take out insurance policies on certain family members and then collect the rewards after unfortunate fates befall them. The cast (which includes Shelley Fabares, Gwyneth Paltrow and Matthew Perry) try their best, but the tone of the movie is perpetually off, the narrative is confusing (with time racing along and secondary characters coming and going), and there's so little sympathy for the victims that when Paltrow finally decides to take her domineering papa to court and is shown a bloody photo of a murdered loved one, she hardly seems affected. The inter-relationships between Urich's four daughters doesn't satisfy either, and their conversations about whether or not their father is a murderer are so blasé that the concluding events are far from suspenseful. Urich passed away in real-life far too soon, yet these types of B-minus movies didn't leave him with much of an acting legacy; his central performance (sweating and stammering one minute and coolly unapologetic the next) is a colorful one but it makes no emotional sense--and neither does the film.
Review of Deadly Relations
