Growing Pains: Return of the Seavers

He's the man! I'm not watching unless they bring Boner back on. Growing pains was a delightfully amusing yet intensely realistic sitcom based around a late-80s, early 90s suburban family. They had their laughs, they had their tears, but most of all, they had each other. Boner was Mike Seaver's not-too-swift but oh-so-amusing best friend. Boner was the Danny DeVito to Mike's Arnold Schwarzenegger; shorter, stupider, uglier, but quite adorable in his own special way. A Growing Pains reunion would without Boner would be like a having your family reunion without your blabbering retarded uncle; it'd be nice to see everyone, but that special something would be missing. Please bring back Boner. Do it for the fans. Do it for future. Do it for the love.

The whole movie has annoying background music for some reason that makes it hard to focus on the characters and what they are saying. Why do this? It was 2004, not 1970's and Benji...

OK, sitcom reunions, never a good thing. we all know this from little turds like the facts of life reunion and others to hit the reunion graveyard. the growing pains reunion of a few years ago is possibly one of very few reunions to not land face flat, it was as if, we hadn't missed a thing.

in this one, the parents are moving, and the movie opens up with them packing up the odds and ends to prepare for the big move. during this first scene and the ten minutes or so to follow, we are exposed to more cheese and clichés than we can stand to see, and we become worried about whether or not these actors knew what kind of humiliation might become of this TV movie.

the movie doesn't go very far, the whole thing takes place in one day, a bold move used usually in thrillers or half hour shows, however, more events than could ever occur in one day (since this is fiction) do occur.

the script? it seems well written, but under pressure. it holds a lot of elements used in your average romance-family feature. there are never times where you are tempted to chuckle along with the parts you know you're supposed to laugh at, but the story and the events are what really involve the audience. my personal favorite parts, the parts that made me burst into laughter, usually involved the always well-done brother/sister chemistry between Mike (Cameron) and Carol (Gold). another thing i enjoyed personally, that i really admire the actor's ability to make work was the mentioning the story from the audiences point-of-view. Jason Seaver makes a reference to Mike about "...166 episodes..."

on a scale of one to ten, a sure-fire 8.5/B+

this movie has a lot to offer, and is a great one to watch when the family gets together.

Usually, reunion movies can be corny and the actors may seem uncomfortable in reprising their roles. Not so with this movie; it was clever and made some cute references to the original show, and the actors were just as good as when the original series ran. They also looked really great! The plot was very good; I think both Maggie and Jason deserved a break after raising four children and I could see them retiring and having a leisurely life. The only thing I could'nt see was them selling their home. I am glad that they decided against leaving in the end. I liked the fact that Mike still had a little of his old self in him, but that he turned out to be a responsible parent in the end, and put his family's needs before monetary gain. I hope they run this movie again-I should have taped it, I would enjoy seeing it again.

I think the Growing Pains, "Return of the Seavers" was wonderful. The show was so realistic in that the kids that are married all wanted the parents to stay put and the kids that are younger could care less. That is so real life. You don't realize what your parents are all about till you are married and then have children. Then the way the cell phones rang all the time is so real life. Every place you look someone is on a cell phone. Then the tone to the theme song was too cute. I also liked the way Kirk and Chelsea played their real life as close as possible in the movie. Like when they talked about adoption. That is wonderful for people to know that it is OK to adopt. I love that theme song, especially since my twins played the role of Tracy Gold's baby in this movie. Even though she didn't have the baby till the last 10 minutes of the movie I think she turned out to be a great mom. She was a lil nervous, but believe me, she was really great with my babies and so was the whole cast. I wish them all luck and hope they have an opportunity to make another movie.