Marcia Gay Harden's performance is amazingly sincere, sort of lending credibility to some scenes that are far beneath her. For instance, she awkwardly crashes a high school party full of sex, booze, and drugs in search of her daughter. There's certainly hilarity in the deadly serious way with which teen sex and syphilis are treated, demonized in a way more typical of 1980's after school specials. The weird conclusions that are drawn here -- that both overbearing and lax parenting make teenage daughters trampy -- make this particularly objectionable. But Harden gives a few scenes a tinge of poignancy.
