Big Girls Don’t Cry… They Get Even 1991

Laura Chartoff [Hillary Wolf], a 15-year-old girl, grows up inside a sprawling, chaotic clan splintered by divorce, where affection often competes with self-interest and competing loyalties. Her father, David [Griffin Dunne], is a free-spirited artist who keeps moving from one marriage to another, now living with his fourth wife Barbara [Patricia Kalember], and their child Jessie. Laura’s mother, Melinda [Margaret Whitton], has also kept remarrying and is currently with Keith [David Strathairn], a successful but sometimes calculating businessman who is a widower with three kids of his own—Josh [Dan Futterman], Corinne [Jenny Lewis], and Kurt [Trenton Teigen]. To complicate matters further, Laura’s half-brother Sam [Ben Savage], a precocious 10-year-old, adds another layer to the family dynamic. The family’s intertwined relationships create a sense of warmth and a sense of constraint in equal measure, with Laura often feeling like an observer rather than a participant in the adult world around her.

The story begins with a quiet ache: Josh returns to his mother’s grave on the anniversary of her death, and the moment mirrors the fragile connections that bind the household. Laura’s attempts to speak with Josh draw the ire of Keith, who disciplines her for crossing lines he deems proper for a girl of her age. The incident deepens Laura’s sense of isolation within her blended clan and sets in motion a decision that will pull her away from the house she feels increasingly alien to. Feeling hurt and unrecognized, Laura decides to run away, seeking out Josh at his lakeside cabin, hoping to find a place where she can be understood and feel seen.

At the cabin, Laura finds a degree of ease and companionship in a brief, uncomplicated pairing of conversations and companionship, a respite from the friction that characterizes her daily life at home. Yet Josh, perhaps wanting to prove his own allegiance or simply to test boundaries, tries to involve Laura’s family by reaching out to someone without telling her first. Keith quickly surmises that Laura might be with Josh, and a tense confrontation looms as the family closes in on the cabin. When they arrive, Laura senses the fragile trust she has built and fears a betrayal, so she decides to run again, escaping to a place where she can buy time to decide what kind of family she wants to be part of.

Meanwhile, the search pulls the entire clan under one roof once more. Barbara arrives with Jessie, and Laura’s father returns with Stephanie [Adrienne Shelly], who is pregnant with his twins, bringing a couple of new expectations into the gathering. The house becomes a crossroads where each member confronts their own truths and biases, forcing them to confront who they are to each other and how they want to proceed in a world where family ties are both a sanctuary and a source of conflict. The extended cast—a mix of neighbors, teenagers, and law enforcement—adds color and texture to the day, painting a broader portrait of life in a blended, imperfect family.

As the days unfold, Laura encounters a range of characters and experiences that peel back layers of pretense and reveal the underlying longing for connection. The family, too, experiences moments of clarity and misstep as they move through the emotional landscape of a search-and-rescue ordeal that tests loyalties and reveals what each person is willing to sacrifice for one another. Throughout this period, the sense of danger and responsibility grows, even as the tone occasionally lightens with small, human moments of humor, resilience, and stubborn love.

The tension culminates when the police arrive with news that remains deliberately unclear. Laura’s jacket—bearing blood from a skirmish with a robber she punched—becomes the focal point of fear and worry. The jacket’s presence underscores how a single, tangible clue can upend assumptions and force a family to confront the possibility that Laura has been harmed. This development becomes the hinge on which the adults reassess their relationships with each other and with Laura, pushing them toward a reckoning about what it means to belong to a family that feels both gifted and burdensome.

When Laura returns to the cabin, the moment is charged with anticipation and anxiety. She runs into Josh, who has his own version of the truth about the events that transpired and the reasons behind the chaotic day. Laura accuses him of betraying her to her parents, but Josh reveals that his call was meant to connect Laura with Barbara, someone Laura actually admired, not to fracture her trust. The exchange reframes the conflict: the two had been testing the boundaries of loyalty, trust, and independence, but the revelation helps Laura understand that she cannot escape the pull of family. In that realization, she chooses to rejoin the household and embrace the “weirdness” of her extended family with a gentler, more tolerant acceptance than before. The experience leaves each member a little wiser, a little more aware of their own needs, and a touch more hopeful about the possibility of growing together rather than apart.

In the end, the family’s shared ordeal serves as a catalyst for gradual, imperceptible changes. Laura remains a central figure—no longer merely a girl adrift in a crowded house, but a young person who recognizes that love and responsibility can coexist with chaos. The narrative closes with a quiet sense of resolve: the household still flawed, still complicated, but more aware of each other’s pains and potential, and more willing to make space for the stubborn, unpredictable, and lasting ties that bind them.