斯坦尼（约翰·库萨克 饰）在一间超级市场工作，带着两名女儿海蒂与朵儿一起生活，妻子格雷斯是名士兵，此刻正征战沙场。　　斯坦尼的生活平淡，对女儿们十分关怀却要求严格。妻子不幸牺牲的消息传到了斯坦尼的耳中，他不敢把消息告诉日夜思念母亲的孩子们。　　于是他决定要满足孩子们最单纯的愿望，带她们到主题公园去玩。海蒂跟朵儿从叔叔的口中得知，父亲因为视力的问题无法成为士兵，他是有一股爱国热情的。海蒂感觉父亲跟平常不一样，可是不敢多言。一路上斯坦尼与海蒂有了很多的交流，更了解彼此了。　　他们终于到达了公园，可是海蒂却似乎感觉到某些事情发生了……

Marg Duffield (Lee Remick) is the Maine wife of Al (Joseph Sommer) whose daughter Peg (Marlee Matlin) is deaf. Peg's husband is killed in a car accident on the way to visit the Maine house, and the Duffield's take in Peg's six year old daughter, Lisa, while Peg recovers. Since Lisa is a speaking child, Marg thinks of her the way she wanted Peg to be, and seeks guardian custody.　　Remick's role is secondary to Matlin's, though she is presented as a tragic figure, particularly as Al refuses to help her plan to gain Lisa. Peg's deafness is said to be from a childhood case of spinal meningitis, and the teleplay by Louisa Burns-Bisogno, with story by Louisa and Tom Bisogno, reduces Remick to a textbook mother who is self-hating from guilt and therefore cannot love her own daughter. In a memorable scene, Peg angrily signs her exit to Marg, since Marg has refused to learn sign language, though Peg has learned to speak for her mother.　　The treatment uses the Tennesee Williams play, The Glass Menagerie, for therapy, to help Peg overcome her grief and also Marg `lose her unicorn horn' and embrace her daughter. Whilst Peg choosing to act in this play may seem an odd choice for someone grieving, what is more noticable is that Matlin is far too more glamourous to be believable as Laura. The Bisogno's include Michael O'Keefe as Dan, Peg's deceased husband's best friend and director of Actors Theatre for the Deaf, to offer Peg a new romantic interest, and thankfully she rebukes his protestations of love. Although his opinion may be influenced by his `crush', Dan tells Peg that being different is better than being normal, since the normal ones are as `common as weeds'. This philosophy reads as rather Nietzschean, on the level of artists not being restricted to the common moral code.　　Director Karen Arthur either has those signing also speaking or those signing being translated for the audience, though in one scene the sound of lapping waves drowns out the dialogue between Dan and Peg. She also gives Matlin some good moments, one being her scream of horror when she hears the news of the death of her husband, and another when she chases Remick down a flight of steps, hitting her.

An impassive young girl is taken from her suicidal London life, back to her home in North England on a bizarre bus trip. Seen through the poetic eye of the camera, this is a commentary of doomed British morbidity. In HD.