Music superstar Bud Parks, along with his statuesque wife, Alice, and their approximately eight-year-old daughter, Terri Jo, return to his small hometown, fictional Doak City, Indiana, for his paternal grandfather's 80th birthday.

Over time he is revealed to be dominating, violent, exploitive and shameless, to the point of even making a pass at Bud's wife.

She also seems to view her promiscuity, and the need to keep it secret, as a source of excitement for a housewife and mother who resides in what she considers to be a boring town.

Already disillusioned by the music business and thinking about leaving it, he realizes that he's a small-town man at heart and wants to stay in Doak City, where many of his relatives still reside.

California-bred Alice continues to love her husband but quickly becomes tired of small town life and his neglect.

Speck shows no interest or sympathy in his son's problems but expresses displeasure in having received none of the millions of dollars Bud has made in music.

Bud warns Speck to make no further sexual advances at Alice and, in a rage, knocks the food and tableware off the table.

The starring cast of Falling from Grace includes:[2][3] Filmed in Mellencamp's hometown of Seymour, Indiana, the 100-minute drama film is the on-screen and directorial debut of rock singer John Mellencamp,[4] with Victor Hammer as director of photography, Dennis Virkler as editor, George Corsillo as production designer, and Harry Sandler as producer.

[10] The New York Times' Janet Maslin was not impressed with Mellencamp's performance nor direction, but complimented the assembled cast and the film's "folksy, collaborative feeling that works well with Mr. McMurtry's rueful ideas about guilt, redemption and the impossibility of recapturing the past.

Travers complimented the "fine performances" of Lenz, Hemingway and O'Connell, and overall said Mellemcamp made an "admirably unfussy movie that sneaks into your heart with the hypnotic power of a song".

Ebert was also impressed with McCurty's "uncommonly good original screenplay" and the characters he created being "three-dimensional", noting that Lenz "has many of the best scenes".

Morris criticized his directing as well, arguing that Mellencamp "has problems staging McCurty's talky, high literary script", and that "long, dialog-filled scenes meander along without effect".

Johnson says that Mellencamp's debut with his film, is "more than a musician's vanity effort", but it "proves oddly lacking muscle and bite".

He also called the Buzzin' Cousins a "poor man's" Traveling Wilburys, and that "collaborations [like this] only work if they establish some camaraderie; these performances sound like they were phoned in from various parts of the country".

[17] The Dallas Morning News Michael Corcoran had a different take on the Buzzin' Cousins, opining they are the "heartlands answer to the Traveling Wilburys".