Parenthood (1989)

Ron Howard assembles four Buckman siblings and their assorted offspring for a study of familial anxiety that runs two hours without ever raising its voice. The cast is large, white, and comfortable, and the film regards them with a fondness that borders on the anthropological. The single exception to the complexion of the ensemble is Cool, Larry's biracial son, who arrives courtesy of a Las Vegas showgirl and is absorbed into the household without a syllable of comment. His presence registers as a casting decision, not a subject. The movie has no interest in what his arrival might mean, and it never asks.

The gender arrangements are those of their moment. Helen manages a bank, raises two children alone, and dates the science teacher, which is a fair amount of agency for a studio comedy of the period. Susan chafes against a husband who treats their daughter as a research project, and her rebellion takes the form of junk food and a sabotaged diaphragm. These are domestic grievances, not arguments. Money surfaces as well, through Gil's office politics and Larry's schemes, though the film treats finance as weather rather than a system anyone might question.

Mental health appears in the person of Kevin, who needs a counselor, and Garry, who retreats to his room with a paper bag. The film handles both as family business, which is to say as texture for the parents' worry. There is no crusade here, no lesson delivered from a height. Frank's advice that a parent's concern never ends is the closest thing to a thesis, and it is offered gently over a roller coaster metaphor. The result is warm, well acted, and entirely content to observe. Dianne Wiest and Jason Robards do the heavy lifting. The film says the old things with wit, which is enough.