As the baby boomers age, it's only natural to assume that their films will become more and more concerned with the inevitable: death and legacy. Such is the case with ONE TRUE THING. The film concerns the archetypal if somewhat idealized American family. The father, George is the epitome of the college professor while Kate, the mother, is Martha Stewart. The daughter, Ellen, is a struggling but destined to succeed reporter in New York, while the son is a student at Harvard. This family of Cleavers for the 90s live in a wonderful house in upstate New York.

        But all is not well in Cleaverdom, and as the film unfolds we see that the relationships in the family are caught up in their own mythology, which has to be dismantled to allow for truth and honesty to develop. The catalyst for this monumental growth is Kate's illness. She has cancer and is going to need constant care. And the caregiver, George decrees, is to be Ellen. But Ellen makes it pretty clear that she doesn't much like her mother, so this is going to be interesting.

        And it is interesting. Ellen is forced to spend four or five months in her mother's shoes, and the fit is less than comfortable. And, of course, Ellen has to discover all manner of things about the lives of her parents, and about herself in this period.

        All this is pretty interesting stuff, and certainly calls for much inner reflection, but especially given the title "One True Thing" I found the delivery of the storyline to be less than effective. The audience is spoonfed information about the family, filtered through a conversation between Kate and the D.A. It's not clear until the very end what is actually going here, and why. Fluctuating between overwhelming pathos, melodrama, and more than a little intrigue, the film feels uneven, often stretching the suspension of disbelief way beyond the norm.

        What is very certain, however, is the excellence of the three leading characters. Meryl Streep and William Hurt as the parents could not be better cast and their performances are strong and utterly believeable. Renee Zwelleger is equally fine as Ellen. Her naivete and sentimentality which I found cloying in "Jerry Maguire" seems perfect in "One True Thing." I enjoyed this film, with some mild reservations about the delivery of the story.

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