wes-connors "Corporate executive Tom Williams (John Ritter) and his beautiful wife Gina (Rachel Hunter) take a much needed family vacation to sunny California. Unfortunately, they end up in the sights of Eddie (Eric Roberts), a career criminal, and his violent crew of kidnappers looking for their next mark. The crooks earn Tom's trust, get his guard down, and snatch Gina and their children. If Tom ever wants to see his family again, he must pay Eddie $1.2 million, his entire net worth. With only one day to comply and no one to turn to for help, Tom is in a race against time, with his family's lives at stake," according to the DVD sleeve.That is an excellent description of the "Tripfall" plot, but doesn't give you any idea about how painful it is to watch this "family in peril" movie. It could be the worst to feature two fairly well-known names - those being Eric Roberts and John Ritter. They are so mismatched, it's pathetic. If Mr. Ritter were in shape, they could have exchanged roles; then, the actors might have made it more interesting. For the record, most others in the cast are better; though, admittedly, that's not difficult to say. For skin trackers, Katy Boyer wears a barely there pink bikini in extreme close-up, and the topless bar scene occurs early.** Tripfall (6/27/00) Serge Rodnunsky ~ Eric Roberts, John Ritter, Rachel Hunter, Katy Boyer

merklekranz Eric Roberts is in full psychopath mode, yet strangely there is only a couple trickles of blood. He and his accomplices seem to be driving around a beach resort for almost the entire film. John Ritter is good in the first part of the movie, but once the family is snatched, he really struggles with the underdeveloped script. Rachel Hunter as his wife doesn't have much to do except look scared. The two kids are just plain annoying. The ending is too convenient, and not to be believed, with Ritter suddenly morphing into the hero type. Eric Robert's performance is worth a look, but do not expect to be enthralled with the overly simplistic plot, and numerous lapses in logic. - MERK

jeannakang Great acting by Eric Roberts (and okay with John Ritter, too) but everybody else is forgettable. It's got some genuine terror moments and makes you think twice about giving out personal information to strangers on vacation. However, the ending didn't really work for me. It was all too convenient and made to make John Ritter look like a hero and the cops to look incompetent. I caught it on TV late night, and that's where it should stay.

Nikos7 An idea without any originality, but with the potential for a fairly good flick, gets destroyed by the stupidest plot turns I've seen in quite some time. One would think that Serge Rodnunsky (the guy responsible for this) didn't spend more than a few hours writing down the script 'cause every time that the plot comes to a critical point things just don't make ANY sense at all. I don't want to get barred from IMDB so I won't include any spoilers but I can tell you that a brain-dead lizard would have probably done a better job in making things look realistic in this film. Eric Roberts is, as always, good at the villain's role (BTW checkout his trivia at IMDB, some really interesting stuff there!) and that's about it!