MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD

It's spring again. And look what the Easter bunny has brought all the way from France: Daddy's illegitimate son. Product of a mad moment a decade ago, little Jean-Claude arrives wearing a heavy coat of wistfulness atop his natural Gallic charm. His mother, you see, has died of Segal's syndrome (named after the author of Love Story, in whose calculating and sentimental mind this new imposition first arose), and all that stands between the lad and orphanhood is Bob Beckwith's willingness to do the decent thing by getting his wife and daughters to accept the boy. The issue is never much in doubt, since Martin Sheen plays this humanities professor as if his subject were actually humanitarianism. As the wife, Blythe Danner does her customary turn as the best thing about a bad mess. But even her tart realism cannot rescue this movie from its sappy source. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.