Michael and Corinne Mulvaney and their four children, Michael Jr., Patrick, Maryanne ("Marianne" in the original novel), and Judd, are the seemingly perfect all-American family living the seemingly perfect all-American dream in a small, rural town in upstate New York, where Michael Sr. has a successful business as a building contractor. The film chronicles the family's fall from grace after Maryanne, at the time a teenage schoolgirl, is raped at a party by a boy at her school. She, however, does not want to give evidence and the police are reluctant to prosecute, possibly swayed by the fact that the boy's family are wealthy and influential. The stresses caused by this incident lead to all four children leaving home and to a greater or lesser extent becoming alienated from their parents, who eventually divorce.
The film is based on a novel written by Joyce Carol Oates, and while I have not read it I am familiar with some of the author's other work. Her novels are normally quite lengthy and complex, with a large cast of characters and several interconnected plot lines, features which would make them difficult to adapt for the screen. (Although one of America's most highly regarded modern novelists, I am not aware of any other films based on her books). I suspect that "We Were the Mulvaneys" is a novel of this type and that the screenplay is based on a very basic filleted outline of the plot, with a lot of the book's complexities going missing in the transition from page to screen. An hour-and-a-half running time- the standard length of TV movies when allowance is made for commercial breaks- would not normally be long enough to do full justice to an Oates novel.
If this is so, it would explain why the film never comes to life, even though it deals with some serious issues. The action supposedly takes place in the seventies and eighties, but there is not much period colour. There are some decent acting contributions, especially from Beau Bridges as Michael Sr., Blythe Danner as Corinne and Tammy Blanchard, an actress I had not previously come across, as Maryanne. Overall, however, I felt that this was a film which did little more than go through the motions and that a better film could have been made from the story. 6/10
