Entertaining TV-movie (very playlike) about a family shackled by moralistic beliefs. Diahann Carroll is effective as the protagonist and Rosalind Cash is better as the prodigal daughter. Carroll and Cash light up the screen and make this worth watching. This is isn't a heavyweight drama but it's good. Check it out!!!
5 Reviews
Sissy and he sisters
jilljohnson-803598 August 2022
Warning: Spoilers
I absolutely love this movie I watched it many times since 1982. I feel it is poignant on sensitive subjects ,secrets, resilient women. Oh! And the games people play. Caroline is the big sister, prudy, humorless I don't think she laughed more than once during the entire film. So condescending, rude holier than thou, secretly having an Affair with the minister not much held from everyone else.
Sissy, the youngest dreams of Olympic figure skating, she too is confused by big sister. She felt unwanted and unloved, Caroline always chastising, moralizing and disapproving of her hearts choice of ice skating, ( teaching of course is far more acceptable) (not knocking) The father Frank Lovejoy family patriarc and village bully dominating their lives Caroline worships him even though he died years back. Life for sissy is difficult in love, career and sisters, it's a "push me, pull u" for this girl struggling to become into womanhood.
And then there's Freida!!!! (Horn section and other chaos) she arrives non ceremony surprising her sister's not only with her presence but with son Danny. She left detroit to save him from juvey hall. She hated that house. She left 13 years ago and vowing never to return feelings ever changed. Same old, same old resentments and moralizing from Caroline, sissy is happy to see her. Danny likes the big white house instantly, he soon "hates" Caroline she does have a way of making people feel less and she much more.
I do like Freida her indomitble spirit. She does have a drinking problem and libido problems. Danny's father is Harry Burton a good man and musician that ex of his runs him into the ground with her condescending remarks. Danny loves his father Caroline told her she never loved him, "what do you know about love" more than she did.
Eddie is Freida love interesting back to school she took off with Harry first chance she got. Climbing out the window! With Harry.
There is to be a church bazaar to raise money for the ministers campaign. He asks Caroline to take measures that aren't exactly honest but love is blind. One of the them involves her house and trying to sell family silver. When she arrives at the owners store to sell, she gets the old Southern antebellum attitude "calls back memories" the woman resents a successful black person and she let's her know it. However, Caroline has tendencies to do the same. The bazaar is a success Frida drunk on her backside making a spectacle of herself in front of the entire congregation her sister's and worst of all her son, Eddie calls her a tramp it's obvious she was shocked to be told that ends up with minster then flood gates open. The secrets come out about their parents, the minister and sissy feelings of abandonment. Big fight, sissy finally making her belated exit Freida running off again,Caroline telling the ministr to leave. Eddie and Danny hit it off well, Freida always messes up. They leave for the station heading some place.
I did like the ending. Yes a happy one but what's wrong that? Frida finally realized her son needs stability. She knows it would be selfish and serving only herself if she ran off.
Things will get better time does help. The Lovejoy sisterhood.
Sissy, the youngest dreams of Olympic figure skating, she too is confused by big sister. She felt unwanted and unloved, Caroline always chastising, moralizing and disapproving of her hearts choice of ice skating, ( teaching of course is far more acceptable) (not knocking) The father Frank Lovejoy family patriarc and village bully dominating their lives Caroline worships him even though he died years back. Life for sissy is difficult in love, career and sisters, it's a "push me, pull u" for this girl struggling to become into womanhood.
And then there's Freida!!!! (Horn section and other chaos) she arrives non ceremony surprising her sister's not only with her presence but with son Danny. She left detroit to save him from juvey hall. She hated that house. She left 13 years ago and vowing never to return feelings ever changed. Same old, same old resentments and moralizing from Caroline, sissy is happy to see her. Danny likes the big white house instantly, he soon "hates" Caroline she does have a way of making people feel less and she much more.
I do like Freida her indomitble spirit. She does have a drinking problem and libido problems. Danny's father is Harry Burton a good man and musician that ex of his runs him into the ground with her condescending remarks. Danny loves his father Caroline told her she never loved him, "what do you know about love" more than she did.
Eddie is Freida love interesting back to school she took off with Harry first chance she got. Climbing out the window! With Harry.
There is to be a church bazaar to raise money for the ministers campaign. He asks Caroline to take measures that aren't exactly honest but love is blind. One of the them involves her house and trying to sell family silver. When she arrives at the owners store to sell, she gets the old Southern antebellum attitude "calls back memories" the woman resents a successful black person and she let's her know it. However, Caroline has tendencies to do the same. The bazaar is a success Frida drunk on her backside making a spectacle of herself in front of the entire congregation her sister's and worst of all her son, Eddie calls her a tramp it's obvious she was shocked to be told that ends up with minster then flood gates open. The secrets come out about their parents, the minister and sissy feelings of abandonment. Big fight, sissy finally making her belated exit Freida running off again,Caroline telling the ministr to leave. Eddie and Danny hit it off well, Freida always messes up. They leave for the station heading some place.
I did like the ending. Yes a happy one but what's wrong that? Frida finally realized her son needs stability. She knows it would be selfish and serving only herself if she ran off.
Things will get better time does help. The Lovejoy sisterhood.
Intelligent telling of a common family circumstance.
bkwinman1 April 1999
Maya Angelou's story of the family stresses that occur when an older sister (Diahann Carroll) attempts to maintain a home, left by her revered father, in an ultra-moralistic way (regardless of the fact that she is secretly having an affair with the married preacher). Nevertheless, her uptight need to maintain a sense of propriety of course goes against the wishes of her much younger sister (Irene Cara) who, as an accomplished ice skater, is striving for her own independence. And if this isn't enough, into it is suddenly thrust a third sister (Rosalind Cash), who is a single mother with a pre-teen son, who "comes home" with her boy after living for years in the ghettos of Detroit. And because she is the complete antithesis of her older sister in morals and deportment, immediately she sides with her younger sister against the strictures set down in the home. And although the conflicts can be anticipated, the level of the dialogue and the intensity of the characters which Ms. Angelou has built into her story is well worth the price of the ticket. My only regret is that the ending is much too Disney-like unbelievable, and out of character which, I feel, could have been much stronger if there hadn't been such a need for a "happy ending" resolution.
Actress Rosalind Cash Died in 1995
ktoglesby13 September 2005
Sadly, Rosalind died of cancer in 1995. "Sister, Sister" is a wonderful movie--Diahann and Rosalind Cash are at their best! Even today, this movie is one anyone--black or white, male or female--will enjoy. This movie was filmed four or five years before Diahann's other masterful, leading-lady-performance in the movie 'Claudine.' This movie also is one that portrays African Americans in a positive light--something rare in the '70s. It's kinda neat seeing little Kristoff St. John (now famous as the well-loved character Neil Winters on the soap "The Young and the Restless") playing the tween son of Rosalind Cash's character Freida; wow--he's come a long way and endured a great career (much like Laurence Fishburn, who starred as a young kid in the movie "Earl, Cornbread and Me."It would be pretty cool to see a remake of this movie--starring, say, Angela Bassett, Lynn Whitfield and Halle Berry.
A black-American variation of Chekhov? Not quite...but Rosalind Cash is excellent
moonspinner552 July 2011
Writer Maya Angelou, perhaps inspired by Chekhov's play "Tri sestry", penned this talky, stagy teleplay about a ne'er-do-well black woman in her forties who shows up on the doorstep of her childhood home after some 13 years of estrangement from her family. Reuniting with her two sisters, who still live in the house willed to them by their demanding father, she instantly opens up old wounds and hurts from the past. Angelou, who also co-produced with director John Berry, sets a solemn tone right from the start, what with Diahann Carroll in love with a married pastor (who's been dipping into church funds to further his political career!) and Irene Cara acting like a (somewhat-overage) boy-crazy teenager. Rosalind Cash's Freida, then, is like a breath of fresh air. Cash overrides the poetic pretensions in Angelou's dialogue, and even makes the writer's pedantic introductions sound natural. She gives the movie a bit of heart, even if the scenario itself is rife with the kind of theatrical sentimentality which may work wonders on the stage but rarely comes across on television.
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