Deborah Hobart Movies

Inspired by actual events, The Price of a Broken Heart tells the tale of a marriage shattered, and a wife who refuses to play the victim. Joe (Timothy Carhart) and Dot (Park Overall) have been married for nineteen years: They've got three sons, a lovely home, and Joe's career is on the upswing. But Joe's office assistant Lynne (Laura Innes) has always wanted a perfect family of her own, and now she's convinced that her dream is finally within reach. With cool calculation, Lynne lures Joe into an extramarital affair that spans a passion-fueled three years. Eventually, Joe breaks down and reveals the affair to Dot. Enraged at the betrayal and determined to strike back at the women who tried to break up her family, Dot sues her husband's mistress for $1 million under an archaic North Carolina law known as "alienation of affection." The law was designed to protect husbands and wives from predatory home wreckers, but can it still be enforced in an era where fifty percent of marriages fail anyway? As the trial gets underway, Dot endures humiliation and the media frenzy in a noble bid to show Lynne just how strong true family ties can be. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

The made-for-TV Twisted Desire could be compared to the 1968 theatrical feature Pretty Poison, the difference being that the earlier film was totally fiction, and the later one based on a true story. In a spectacular example of casting against type, Melissa Joan Hart plays 14-year-old Jennifer Stanton, who despises her dominineering parents (Daniel Baldwin, Isabella Hoffman) so intensely that she fantasizes about removing both of them from the face of the earth. Meanwhile, troubled 17-year-old Nick Ryan (Jeremy Jordan), recently sprung from juvenile detention, is trying to get his act together by working as a gas station attendant. Upon sizing up Nick, Jennifer seduces him, then persuades him to murder her mother and father. The ultimate punishment levied for the crime is bitterly ironic, all the more so because it really happened. Twisted Desire originally aired May 13, 1996, on NBC. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The feminist outrage of Thelma & Louise (1991) screenwriter Callie Khouri blended superbly with director Lasse Hallstrom's predilection for stories about idiosyncratic families in this effective comedy-drama. Julia Roberts stars as Grace King Bichon, a prim small-town wife who is incensed when she learns that her husband Eddie Bichon (Dennis Quaid) is having an affair, and that it's not his first dalliance. Grace embarrasses her husband publicly -- then moves in with her wise-mouthed little sister Emma Rae (the scene-stealing Kyra Sedgwick). Grace becomes even angrier when her mother Georgia (Gena Rowlands) and wealthy father, horse breeder Wyly King (Robert Duvall), side with Eddie in the conflict, fearing the small-town gossip that's sure to swirl around their daughter's marital woes. However, when Georgia finds that Wyly has been a long-term philanderer as well, she kicks him out of his palatial home, embroiling the entire King family in a war between the sexes. Something to Talk About went through several title changes, variously being named "Game of Love" and "Grace Under Pressure" before producers settled on the title of the popular Bonnie Raitt song. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

Screenwriter Callie Khouri makes her directorial debut with this adaptation of a pair of popular novels by author Rebecca Wells, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and Little Altars Everywhere. Sandra Bullock stars as Sidda Lee Walker, a New York playwright who opens a can of emotional worms with her estranged, boozy mother, Vivi (Ellen Burstyn), when she discusses her painful childhood and particularly Vivi's less-than-enviable mothering skills in a Time magazine article. The eccentric Louisiana drama queen Vivi has already been barred from her daughter's oft-delayed wedding to her fiancé, Connor (Angus Macfadyen), so the article sends her into a rage. Coming to the rescue of the relationship are Necie (Shirley Knight), Caro (Maggie Smith), and Teensy (Fionnula Flanagan), a trio of bickering women, who, along with Vivi, formed a secret society of feminist empowerment and friendship 60 years earlier that they dubbed the "Ya-Ya Sisterhood." The Ya-Yas kidnap Sidda and bring her home to Louisiana, where they reveal to Sidda via a carefully maintained scrapbook her mother's painful past (with Vivi portrayed in flashback by Ashley Judd), effecting a rapprochement between mother and daughter. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood also stars James Garner. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

Originally intended for theatrical release, The Angel Doll is an adaptation of Jerry Bledsoe's bestselling novel of the same name. Set in the South of the '50s, the story focuses on "Whitey" Black (Cody Newton), a kid from the wrong side of the tracks who befriends middle-class youngster Jerry Barlow (Michael Welch) while the two share a paper route. Jerry learns that Whitey wants to purchase a "very special" doll as a Christmas present for his terminally ill sister. Not only does Whitey meet with opposition from the locals because his sister has polio and is thus regarded as "contagious," but the doll he wants is nowhere to be found in his hometown. Thus it is that Whitey and Jerry embark upon a lengthy, adventure-laden journey in search of the elusive doll, meeting people of all sorts (and all temperaments) along the way. Keith Carradine is top-billed as the adult Jerry Barlow, while Diana Scarwid is given the extremely difficult (and highly contrary) role of Whitey's drink-sodden mother. Filmed in 2002, The Angel Doll was not widely seen until it was picked up for cable play by the Lifetime network in 2004. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide