Staying Together

The family continues to be a busy (and popular) topic on movie screens, from the comedic treatment of Parenthood to the more melodramatic approaches of Dad and Immediate Family. Staying Together, while a more modest film, may be the best of this bunch, precisely because of its modesty.

It’s also not very slick, which is rather refreshing. Staying Together (ah, another of Hollywood’s bland, witless titles) tells the story of a small-town family whose lives revolve around the family business, a popular chicken restaurant. The three sons all work there, and Dad (Jim Haynie) and Mom (Melinda Dillon) also put in their time in the chicken-fat trenches.

The movie establishes these lives in an unhurried, no-frills fashion. In the opening sequence, the middle and most responsible brother, Kit (Dermot Mulroney), literally runs all over town to find his wayward siblings in time for family breakfast. Older brother Brian (Tim Quill) is snoozing in the bed of an older woman (Stockard Channing) and must be rousted out; younger brother Duncan (Sean Astin), still in his teens, is hung over and passed out on a park bench in the middle of town.

What is fine about the treatment of these people, in Monte Merrick’s original screenplay and the actor-oriented direction by Lee Grant, is the absence of any finger-wagging judgments. The characters are imperfect, and they are allowed to be imperfect. They lust, they drink, they walk down main street in the middle of the night and smoke a little weed. The film feels no compunction to flash a “Just Say No” message across the screen.

The script, unfortunately, is imperfect too. The father decides, early in the film, to sell the family business; turns out he doesn’t even like chickens (“They’re rats with a good reputation”). This precipitates a contrived reaction on the part of the oldest son, who bitterly leaves home. Similarly, a later blowup surrounding Kit’s anger at his mother’s new sense of freedom feels tacked-on for the sake of tossing in a little conflict.

It’s a shame the movie seems so concerned with keeping things “dramatic,” because scene by scene it’s quite likable in a meandering, loosey-goosey way. Lee Grant, an accomplished actress, is much better at drawing out individual moments of truth than in constructing a story; some scenes, such as the wedding and reception of Kit’s beloved (Daphne Zuniga), show an intuitive sense that not every feeling can be resolved in neat, movie terms. That’s valuable intuition.

First published in The Herald, November 10, 1989

Also in the cast: Sheila Kelley, Levon Helm, and Lee Grant’s daughter, Dinah Manoff. Grant has directed more documentaries than fiction films, but the description here hints at an unusual talent – which she certainly had as an actress.