A Father's Choice

Not to be disparaging or unfair but this is solidly in the family fare category with solid performances by Peter Strauss and Mary McDonnell.

Viewing this film gets the city out of your mind. The rodeo skills and scenes looked real. You could almost smell the hay. Acting was overall a 4.5. This story apparently was based on real events, and it played as real. Kudos for the dad stepping up. All four main characters had to change, and through it came opportunity to grow. Yes I recommend this very family friendly movie. James Welch Henderson, Arkansas 1/28/2021

Along with Forever Together and Christmas In My Hometown, I rate this as the best of the early Trachtenberg features that I have, so far. I do not like to compare these with the series Pete, Pete and Buffy.

Forever Together as romantic Tracht. I rate it as the pinnacle, but the low budget is fairly obvious.

A Father's Choice is also low budget, but that does not show to such an extent. Here she is a disillusioned early teen whose reality is gradually becoming less putrid. It is quality, as is Forever, just it is not big budget type quality but a quality story.

My DVD is 4x3 NTSC.

I was lucky enough to be attending Bow Valley College (Airdrie Campus) at the time they were there to film the court scenes of the movie (BVC Airdrie campus is attached to the Airdrie Courthouse). Even better, I was given permission to job shadow the set designer and mingle with all the cast! Peter Strauss is very nice (and a bit of a prankster who kept pulling faces at the camera and making the director roll his eyes). I liked the movie, unfortunately I never got a chance to videotape it when it came on television since I did not have a vcr at the time, but I did get to keep an autographed copy of the movie script (somewhere in my packed boxes in storage).

Sisters Kelly (Michelle Trachtenberg) and Chris McClain (Yvonne Zima) have a comfortable well-off living in L. A. A mystery man kills their mom and lets Chris live. The girls go live with their cowboy father Charlie 'Mac' McClain (Peter Strauss) on a ranch for their safety. Their aunt Gayle Miller (Susan Hogan) wants to take them to Chicago. She never liked Mac. Susan Shaw (Mary McDonnell) is from Family Services.

This is "Inspired by a True Story". Inspired usually means close to fictional. It's a fine family film but it leaves the murder mystery unresolved. It seems like a giant hole in the middle of the movie. I kept waiting for the aunt to be the killer or the father to be accused. The aunt accusing the father would seem to be a good courtroom tatic to get custody. If the story could leave out the murder mystery, this would be a fine low intensity family film.