This movie was added to my Ziplist mostly because of Laura Linney, who is awesome in everything she does. I heard of it at the Oscars and was intrigued, so I decided to check it out. I was not disappointed – Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman are clearly the best thing about this movie, hands down.

The story felt very real. Most of us are going to be faced with the idea of putting a loved one in a home, or of dealing with his illness. In this case it was pretty special to see Linney’s concern for her father’s well-being… considering he had never really taken care of her. I liked their relationship as brother and sister too. Finally, the epilogue was really needed, because the whole mood of the movie is pretty depressing so it was nice to have a bit of light at the end of the tunnel.

In a word…dull.

This film looks like it has been cloned from one of the increasing number of ‘writer has old parent and dysfunctional family but they all get sorted out in the end’ genre.

We don’t care about the characters, we don’t care about the plot and we don’t care about their dysfunctions.

As with previous versions of this film the main character is a writer struggling to get his magnum opus completed. He has a dysfunctional relationship with a Polish woman (a non-character) and he teaches in a university. His sister is a writer trying to get a play performed but in the mean time temps in offices to pay the bills. The siblings have been competing with each other most of their lives but both live under the shadow of bad parenting and this has clouded their ability to be successes. He’s overweight (loser?) and she is having a relationship with a married man (loser?)

The father is losing his marbles and is placed in a (cheap) old people’s home. The place is funded by Medicare so you expect the worse but the orderlies turn out to be very nice and caring.

Through the trials and tribulations of being old and dying the children learn how to turn their lives around and become less dysfunctional.

If you want to see this film in another guise watch one of these:

• About Schmidt (old man film)
• Little Miss Sunshine (writer/old man)
• The Squid and the Whale (writer/old man/dysfunctional family)
• Running with Scissors (writer/old man/dysfunctional family)
• Wonder Boys (writer/dysfunctional people)

zzzzzz…