kwally-13962 Review of Stepfather 3

Stepfather 3 (1992 TV Movie)

Well, it was sort of entertaining....

[2/10 · 11 October 2019]

....but that's about all I can say, though I have to imagine that most people with an ounce of common sense weren't expecting red carpet material here. I mean, when you have a character tell her wheelchair-bound son to stay in the car and not go anywhere....and it's not intended to be funny or ironic, then I shouldn't have to work too hard to convince you that this one is a turkey, I hope. And, having mentioned the son-this has got to be one of the most annoying child characters I have ever seen! Whiny, disrespectful, and needy, with an incongruous Illinois accent that made me want to climb the wall ("Day-ad" instead of Dad, "hay-ad" instead of had, etc.-agh), the scene where the stepfather is trying to get him to get up out of his chair and walk actually had me rooting for the bad guy to give him a whack upside the head....turns out the little twerp could actually walk the whole time, which I guess was supposed to be some kind of surprise twist at the end-if only the script hadn't given it away. Anyway....back to the movie....poor Robert Wightman-first he is doomed to be The Other John Boy to the excellent Richard Thomas, and then, here again he is unintentionally bested by Thomas, who plays a far more credible bad guy, and would actually have been much more interesting here, if he ever did trash like this. Wightman is inexplicably still speaking his lines using his Richard Thomas/John Boy intonations, which is a bit unsettling, so maybe that's why my thoughts drifted in that direction....One of the blondes from Three's Company stands where she was told to and recites her lines as the female protagonist, and Season Hubley shows up as The Other Woman, for some reason. The guy playing the priest is a ringer for Dabbs Greer, who probably had better sense than to sign on this disaster. Nope, I wouldn't recommend this trope-filled mess unless you really have nothing else to watch-it's full of things we've seen before (plastic surgery to change a villain's appearance, a kid being the only one to see through it, women rushing to marry some stranger they only just met-all it needs is a collie dog to save the day by pulling someone out of a well). Two stars for being mildly amusing.