The frequently delightful “Family Weekend” opens strongly, as picture-perfect Emily (Olesya Rulin) charges around the family mansion leaving Post-its about her big event, the regional speed jump-rope finals.
No one shows. So Emily takes the logical next step. She drugs her parents — feckless artist Duncan (Matthew Modine) and sarcastic, type-A Samantha (Kristin Chenoweth) — and ties them up for a little course in parenting.
Emily’s siblings are, as they say, acting out. Jackson (Eddie Hassell) films his muscles and wants to be called Thor; Lucy (Joey King) re-enacts films she shouldn’t be allowed to watch; the Asperger’s-ish youngest son (Robbie Tucker) zones out on nature shows.
They unite behind Emily, joined later by hippie grandma Shirley Jones (welcome back, Mrs. Partridge). But people keep dropping by unannounced, and it’s hard to hide two adults duct-taped to swivel chairs.
For a long while, director Benjamin Epps goes for breakneck farce; at its best, this is a batty mixture of family-values editorial and teen spoof. At times, the characters feel more like a set of colliding oddballs than an ensemble. It’s Rulin’s performance that centers the movie, her big-eyed face registering stony determination or bewildered hurt with equal ease.
This satire has a soft center that threatens to become gooey when Duncan and Samantha must grasp the idea that happy families don’t produce hostage situations. But Rulin’s Emily, doing her tightly wound best, earns some sort of happy ending.