Three Wishes

In this torpid fantasy, proto-hippie Jack (Swayze) and his mangy mutt are taken in by Korean War widow Jeanne Holman (Mastrantonio) and her two sons, a decision that affects all their lives. This, after all, is America in the '50s, where an unattached woman taking a single man into her home is tantamount to shagging him on the front porch. Mastrantonio is admirably down-to-earth as a resourceful single parent struggling to raise troubled 11-year-old Tom (Mazzello) and five-year-old Gunny (Mumy) on her own; the elder is worried about not fitting in with his pals on the Little League baseball team, the younger terrified of everything from dogs to imaginary closet monsters. As the visionary vagabond, Swayze is even more metaphysical here than in Point Break, but going one better is his cosmic canine Betty Jane, who causes Gunny's irrational fears to manifest themselves as computer-generated special effects. Reasonably diverting family drama about kids coming of age in Edendale, California, in an era of stifling conformity, but too often spilling over into cod-Zen nonsense.