During one summer in the late 1960's, a treehouse in rural Mississippi becomes the symbolic heart behind a tug-of-war between a freshly-scrubbed group of school-kids and a bunch of bullying, junkyard teenagers. Predictable and somewhat overreaching family-oriented drama shoehorns in Kevin Costner as the father of two of the central good kids; he's just back from Vietnam and still hears the choppers, but we know he's in big trouble once he puts everything on the line to take a dangerous mining job. Mare Winningham plays his wife, who frets over every penny but tells her daughter not to badmouth her dad (the man has dreams, after all). There are lots of heart-to-heart chats, a visit to an old ramshackle house that might one day belong to the family, and a battle for that fort in the tree which never quite leads anywhere. Mostly, this is a noble, decent picture with precious few surprises, the exception being director Jon Avnet's decision to prolong the scenes of bullying, with the deep-seated anger eventually spilling over to the adults. It's like an episode of "The Waltons" crossed with "Stand By Me". *1/2 from ****