Packin' It In

I found it on sale at a video store for a buck, so I checked it out.

It's not too bad. Kind of funny, really.

This movie is a little like Prisoners of Second Avenue or at least a 1980s made-for-tv version of Walden. It's good old get back to nature. Living in Los Angeles is hell for one family. The husband gets laid off after 17 years of working at his job, the teachers burn down the school, the daughter is dating a punker named Johnny Crud, the eleven year old son is taking up smoking, and there is toxic waste bubbling up from the bathtub.

So, when his neighbor decides that he has had enough of living in the city and packs up his family to live at a place called WoodCrest, this guy decides to do the same with his family.

But the country life is no blessing, and is also no easy adjustment. It doesn't help either when your neighbors are a bunch of wackos, specially the 'survivalist' family that lives in a bunker and hoards supplies, waiting for the day that an economic depression or a natural disaster or something will come and destroy everything.

But the family really wants to know if the city sucks and the country does too, then where is a great place to live?

Molly Ringwald is in it as the Valley Girl kind of kid. Sort of funny how she puts on the Valley Girl talk in her pre-country scenes.

It's really a like it or don't like movie, I guess.