Toughlove is a 1985 American TV movie starring Lee Remick and directed by Glenn Jordan.
High-school assistant-principal Rob Charters and his wife Jan discover that their son Gary is into alcohol and worse drugs.
The screenwriter, Karen Hall, based the script in part on incidents from real life Toughlove meetings.
He also felt it was compromised by the need to have a happy ending, adding "The time is long past due, it would seem, for someone to get tough with the networks about the abuse of tired formulas.
"[3] Movie historian Leonard Maltin described the picture as "A promising drama, helped greatly by sincere performances, but undermined by a manipulative script...Mostly a suburban update of Hud; in which Patric and Pfeiffer share the Paul Newman role, Dern and Laurie share Melvyn Douglas's, Remick has Patricia Neal's, and Eric Schiff is in Brandon deWilde's.