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The War at Home Review - Variety
September 16 1996
Family tensions sputter rather than fully ignite in "The War at Home," a decent but far from apocalyptic take on the Vietnam-vet-with-problems scenario. Emilio Estevez's third directorial outing (after the bomb "Wisdom" and better "Men at Work") occasionally presses some real emotional buttons, and is held aloft by a nicely understated perf by his father, Martin Sheen, as his on-screen dad, but there's a fuzziness of dramatic tone and lack of accruing tension that make this "War" more a series of skirmishes than a deeply felt analysis. Domestic B.O. prospects look mild, with foreign hardly likely to show up on the radar for this very specific item.Estevez, who first read James Duff's 1984 Broadway play four years ago, got Disney to bankroll 75% of the $ 4.2 million budget in return for agreeing to play in No. 3 of its "Mighty Ducks" franchise. Technically, pic is his most confident to date, with unforced use of widescreen for the essentially domestic story, and an easy flow to the action. The problems are more in Duff's adaptation of his play, which rarely debates the issues above a folksy local level and lacks the necessary conflict to work on the bigscreen.
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