Family Weekend

Plot

Emily (Olesya Rulin) is a speed rope-jumping champion of her school and general overachiever. She is praised by one love-lorn boy at school (though she is mocked by other students) for her achievements, but her family does not care about her jump roping success. On Friday, Emily wins the regional championship in speed rope-jumping and moves on to the state championship to be held the coming weekend. She looks at the audience only to find nobody from her family cheering for her. She confronts her family at home during a family dinner, but her mother Samantha (Kristin Chenoweth), father Duncan (Matthew Modine), brother Jackson (Eddie Hassell), and sister Lucinda (Joey King) all continue to be wrapped up in themselves and ignore her plea to take her jump-roping seriously.

Inspired by an Animal Planet segment her semi-autistic younger brother Mickey (Robbie Tucker) is watching on treating Tasmanian devils for a kind of cancer by sedating the creatures so treatment can be administered and in a desperate attempt to bring the family back together, Emily secretly drugs her parents' drinks with her mother's sedatives, then binds each of them to a chair. She manages to hold them until Sunday morning with help from her siblings, grandmother GG (Shirley Jones), and her school friend Kat (Chloe Bridges) who is her neighbor. During the weekend, she attempts to teach her parents how to parent. While her father soon succumbs to Stockholm syndrome and wrongly praises her, her mother still unconvinced scolds her often. After an emotional one-to-one with her mother that brings tears from Emily, she ultimately succeeds in both bringing her parents back together and causing all the members of the family to realize that everyone in the family is important and needs support.

By the time the police show up Sunday morning due to videos Kat had put online about the kidnapping, her parents and the neighbor have changed their attitudes and help Emily escape to get to the state finals. During her jump competition, all her family finally appear at the championship to cheer her. She momentarily stops jumping when she sees her family, but still wins second place. The police also show up and arrest her for having attacked her mother's co-worker/faux-boyfriend at her home who had inadvertently interrupted her kidnapping plot.

Emily is later seen at a youth correctional camp with her jump-rope keeping her company as her family comes to bring her back home upon her sentence there expiring.

Cast

Critical reception

Family Weekend on Netflix has received more than 417,000 ratings with an average rating of 3.8, making it one of the most highly watched as well as highly rated Indie Comedies on Netflix ever.