Daddy & Them
Billy Bob Thornton's white-trash comedy has loads of appeal, beginning with a delightful cast playing the most dysfunctional Southern family outside a Faulkner novel. Thornton and Laura Dern play married couple Claude and Ruby Montgomery, whose true love is stymied by petty jealousies over her old boyfriends and his long-ago romance with Ruby's sister, Rose (Kelly Preston). When Claude's Uncle Hazel (Jim Varney) is arrested, the duo join their extended clan in Little Rock to provide support for him and his defense team (a stormy couple sharply played by Jamie Lee Curtis and Ben Affleck). But cooperation is an alien concept to this family; in no time they're bickering, drinking, and deflating dreams. Typical of Thornton, this is serious yet funny stuff, and the actors--including Andy Griffith, John Prine, Diane Ladd, and Brenda Blethyn--work that fine line between drama and comedy with admirable inspiration.--Tom Keogh