This ABC Afterschool Special is a little bizarre but worth viewing anyway. Melora Hardin gives a nicely understated performance as a pre-teen whose parents have just gotten divorced--she is devastated and has shut her father out of her life. She finds a partner in misery in Dana Hill, a girl in the same apartment building whose parents are likewise divorced--the story's main flaw is the heavy-handed way it drives home how NEW and WEIRD divorce is. It wasn't *that* unusual in 1980! The story's strength is its clear-eyed look at girls' friendships--how sometimes, despite all efforts, one friend will simply outgrow another. Dana Hill's frantic attempts to hold on to her friendship with Hardin--threats, gifts and a constantly-asserted loyalty pact--are touching, and she ups the dramatic stakes nicely voodoo rituals and the like. The dialogue is a little awkward at times but the two actresses negotiate most of it skillfully.
*Spoiler* The best scene is at the end--after Dana Hill finally goes over the edge and is sent away, Hardin comes to a halting realization about how relationships can change, and no one's at fault, it just happens. It sounds corny but she delivers the lines well. Then she calls her father for the first time in the whole movie, and quietly tells her father how much she misses him.
*Spoiler* The best scene is at the end--after Dana Hill finally goes over the edge and is sent away, Hardin comes to a halting realization about how relationships can change, and no one's at fault, it just happens. It sounds corny but she delivers the lines well. Then she calls her father for the first time in the whole movie, and quietly tells her father how much she misses him.