LANDLINE
A flawed family comedy with hope, but not for family movie night.
Should You Watch It?
LANDLINE takes a troubled Manhattan family and gradually makes its members feel human. The comedy becomes more involving and funnier after a crude, unconvincing opening, while its hopeful final movement emphasizes honest communication, self-examination, forgiveness, and the possibility of change.
That moral movement comes with a serious cost. The film includes abundant strong language, lewd moments, adultery, premarital and teenage sexual activity, alcohol and drunkenness, marijuana, and heroin use. Some behavior is rebuked, but not all of it. The ending offers hope without resolving everything.
If you are a discerning adult interested in a flawed, well-acted family drama, watch LANDLINE at home, where you can control the experience. Do not choose it for children or young teens.
The Story
NO SPOILERS — WE KEEP THE SURPRISESIn 1995 Manhattan, Dana Jacobs is having doubts about her engagement to Ben. Her rebellious 17-year-old sister, Ali, discovers that their father may be having an affair, drawing the sisters into the family’s hidden tensions.
As Dana’s relationship troubles deepen and Ali behaves more irresponsibly, the family’s secrets begin pressing everyone toward a reckoning. The question is whether these dysfunctional people can start communicating honestly and changing their lives.
Is It Any Good?
Three stars means LANDLINE is worthwhile but uneven. It starts crudely and unconvincingly, then gains power and humor as it reveals the family members’ character traits and tensions.
The acting helps solidify the story. John Turturro and Edie Falco bring strength as the parents, while Jenny Slate and Abby Quinn make the sisters’ troubled relationship increasingly involving. By the end, the film has humanized its flawed characters and created a hopeful, forgiving, though not completely resolved conclusion.
The Worldview
LANDLINE presents a mixed worldview. It recognizes that cheating, deception, spying, hiding things from parents, and experimenting with hard drugs can be morally wrong and personally destructive. It also values family, honest communication, honest self-examination, forgiveness, and hope.
The film’s moral vision is not grounded in an overt relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Its redemptive elements are therefore psychological and social rather than explicitly biblical. Some destructive behavior is rebuked, but the teenage sister’s sexual activity is not really condemned, and the story includes a strong pagan element alongside its moral concerns.
The performances and setting give the film a recognizable New York and East Coast quality that helps its family tensions feel grounded. Yet the film’s central longing for repaired relationships remains incomplete without the spiritual foundation the review finds necessary.
Scripture calls people to honest speech: “Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor” (Ephesians 4:25). The film’s hope for forgiveness points toward a biblical truth, even though it does not fully connect that hope to God.
The Content Guide
The specifics — spoilers included by nature — so you can judge for your own family.
Content Summary
Strong mixed pagan worldview with some strong pagan elements, combined with some moral, redemptive elements, including some pro-family moments and a promotion of forgiveness, especially toward the end, but the story could use more overt Christian, biblical content and less graphic R-rated content; about 53 obscenities (more than half are “f” words), three strong profanities involving Jesus or Christ and 20 light profanities (mostly OMG); brief comic or light violence; briefly depicted fornication in a couple scenes (one relationship involves two 17-year-olds), plus father is having an adulterous affair, and a woman lives with her fiancé before getting married and then cheats on him with her college boyfriend, plus some other sexual references; some upper male nudity and implied nudity; alcohol use and drunkenness, smoking tobacco, smoking marijuana, and 17-year-old girl’s friend snorts heroin and gets girl to do it too, and girl agrees to go buy the heroin when she can’t, but she gets caught, so the heroin use is implicitly rebuked, but not the marijuana use; and, lying, cheating, spying on one’s father, and the family in the movie is dysfunctional, but they start to turn things around by the end of the movie, so there’s some forgiveness and hope toward the end, even though not everything is completely resolved.
Talk About It
Questions for the drive home, the dinner table, or the youth group.
The family’s problems grow when people hide the truth. Why is honest communication difficult, and what can make it possible?
Ephesians 4:25 · Proverbs 12:22The film connects forgiveness with repairing damaged relationships. What is forgiveness, and what is it not?
Colossians 3:13 · Ephesians 4:32Several characters make choices that damage themselves and others. How should honest self-examination change the way we respond to our own failures?
Psalm 139:23–24 · 2 Corinthians 13:5The film presents morality without a clear spiritual foundation. Why does Christian faith say that moral truth rests on God?
Romans 2:14–16 · Micah 6:8The Final Word
LANDLINE becomes poignant and engaging once it gets past its rough opening, and its final emphasis on honesty and forgiveness has real value. But its strong language, sexual immorality, lewd material, and drug references make it unsuitable for children and young teens. Watch it only at home, if you are a discerning adult: WAIT FOR HOME — ADULTS ONLY. For safer family viewing, see.
