FAMILY REUNION: A RELATIVE NIGHTMARE
Starring: Jason Marsden, Melissa Joan Hart
Original Airdate: April, 1995
Type: Comedy/Family Movie
So the Dooley family is insane. And they're about to have a family reunion! Teenager Billy Dooley (Jason Marsden) is definitely dreading it. He's got an evil uncle, a bullying cousin, another cousin who wants his bod, and a wide variety of other relatives who are weird to varying degrees.
Billy's family arrives at the resort where the reunion is being held. Weirdness ensues. Just when Billy is standing at the brink of boredom and aggravation, a ray of light enters his life. A mysterious girl named Sam (played by Melissa Joan Hart) appears at the resort. Billy finds her hot, and decides to introduce himself. Sam tells him to get lost. But she may just need Billy. Turns out her evil stepsisters are trying to kidnap her and drag her back home so that her evil stepmother can ship her off to a boarding school and take her inheritance... or something like that.
In order to keep Sam safe, Billy brings her back to his family and tells them that she's long-lost Cousin Bernice. Most of them buy it, and they eventually decide that she's really cool. But then the real Bernice shows up... not long before Sam gets nabbed by her stepsisters... and not long after they all end up in jail after crashing a nudist colony in a convoy of vehicles and a hot air balloon, piloted by Billy's great-grandmother, Meemaw.
When I was fourteen and this film first aired, I loved it. I think I may have had a thing for Jason Marsden at the time... he was Nelson on Full House, and despite his weird mullet, he wasn't too bad-looking. I also identified with the movie. My family? Also weird. Maybe weirder. Plus, it had Gerrit Graham, who I knew from My Girl 2, and Sara Rue, who I knew from Phenom. You've also got Peter Billingsley (Ralphie from A Christmas Story), Marcia Strassman (the mom from Honey, I Shrunk the Kids), Joe Flaherty (from multiple Zemeckis films), Jo Anne Worley (the wardrobe from Beauty and the Beast!), and plenty more. The movie really could have done without David Lander, however, who plays like eight characters, all annoying.
In the end, Family Reunion: A Relative Nightmare is one large pile of weirdness, but it gets points for its star power and the fact that it really tells the truth about the scariness of family reunions.
Want to know more? Visit this film's page on the Internet Movie Database.
6/19/2005
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