Dec. 19, 1999 -- "Tumbleweeds" is a film about a woman who tends to choose badly when it comes to men, but at least has the sense to bail out of abusive relationships. She bails out time after time and hits the road, looking for a new place to live. Her teenage daughter is getting tired of all this running.

If this sounds like the basic plot to "Anywhere but Here," another film that came out this year, I guess it is. I haven't seen that one, so I can't compare the two, but other critics say they are similar. The mother, Mary Jo Walker (convincingly played by Janet McTeer of "Carrington") is flighty, but honest and caring with her daughter, Ava (Kimberly Brown a player in the "Guiding Light" TV series).

In one scene, Mary Jo tells her daughter to throw valued articles of clothing out of the car window. It is a sort of "out with the old, in with the new" approach. Maybe it is uniquely American. There aren't too many countries where you can pack up your stuff in a car, drive off into the night, and in a few days start a whole new life thousands of miles away in the same country. I suspect that many people have been taken in by the lure of starting over in a new place, only to come face to face with the same old problems again, problems which come from within us.

That's what happens here. The two run way across country from the eastern U.S. to San Diego. Once again Mary Jo gets involved with a bad relationship with a man and once again she gets ready to cut and run. But this time, it isn't so simple. Her daughter has friends and she's tired of running. She wants to make a stand. It is a painful showdown.

What makes the film work is the nice relationship between the mother and daughter. The love-hate tension between the two is made tangible by the fine acting of these two. In fact, the National Board of Review voted McTeer best actress of 1999 films. It was a good acting job, but not that good. The board of review was practically the only one that did not give the best actress vote to Hilary Swank of "Boys Don't Cry."

Despite the premise, this really isn't a road movie. The sets and production design are low-budget, but that doesn't really matter. I found the frequent fade-outs a bit disconcerting. It is sort of like watching a made-for-TV movie. You keep expecting the commercial to come on after the fade-outs, which come at about the same frequency as commercial interruptions on TV. All in all, it is a nice little movie, which will translate really well to television. It rates a B.

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