Man, Woman & Child (1982/Legend Films DVD)

 

Picture: C     Sound: C     Extras: D     Film: C

 

 

Not a horrible film, but predictable and melodramatic enough as it was co-written by the writer of Love Story, Dick Richards’ Man, Woman & Child (1982) is about a family whose husband (Martin Sheen) discovers he has a had a child outside of his marriage when he was in France and this son is going to visit him in the U.S., living for two weeks with his wife (Blythe Danner) and two daughters.  Mature and well-paced, it is also a bit long and drawn out, despite some good performances and intelligent situations.

 

David Z. Goodman (Logan’s Run) co-wrote the script and I had hoped he might have been able to give this some more edge to make this work, but he may have just kept the story from being worse.  The film also relies on Georges Delerue’s score more than it should, but the result was no blockbuster like Love Story.  It is not so bad that anyone needs to say sorry, though.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image is soft, with problematic color and poor detail, hurting the nice cinematography by Richard H. Klein.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is flatter than I would have liked and with a Delerue score, should have been upgraded to stereo.  There are no extras.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo