Director: Josh Boone
Starring: Greg Kinnear, Jennifer Connelly, Lily Collins, Nat Wolff and Liana Liberator.
Distributor: Independent
Runtime: 97 mins. Reviewed in May 2013

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Rating notes: Strong coarse language and drug use

This is an American drama about an author with writer’s block, whose inability to write is caused by his conflicted feelings about the wife who has left him for another man. He has been twice-awarded for his novels, but can’t get back to what he knows he is good at doing.

The author, Bill (Greg Kinnear), lives with his two teenage children, Sam (Lily Collins) and Rusty (Nat Wolff), who aim to be aspiring writers like their father was. He is divorced from their mother, Erica (Jennifer Connolly), and misses her acutely. Bill’s children are affected by the split-up. Sam is about to publish her first novel, but avoids commitment of any kind, while Rusty is in the middle of adolescent growing pains and is searching for affection.

Sam has seen what the promise of an enduring relationship has done to her mother and is “waiting for whatever’s next”. She is angry at her mother for leaving her father, but eventually sheds her angst to respond positively to the attentions of Lou (Logan Lerman), who is a writer in her graduate class. Lou, who is helping to look after his terminally-ill mother is attracted to her romantically and gradually wins her over by his goodness.

Rusty is Sam’s younger sibling, who is into make-believe and drug-taking. He doesn’t know exactly what he wants from life, writes fantasy, and is keen to model himself on the science-fiction author, Stephen King. He falls heavily for Kate (Liana Liberator), who is one of his class-mates at school, but Kate spirals into drug-abuse, and breaks off her relationship with him – she is his “first heart-break and it hurts”. In the middle of all of this melodrama, Bill from time to time engages in the behaviour of stalking his ex-wife, because he is unable to get over her.

This is a film that aims to get the viewer emotionally connected with life’s complex relationship problems. A lot is going on with every character in Bill’s family, and on every issue, the movie wants the viewer to get involved. That aim is only partially successful. Sam plays fast and loose in her willingness to offer sex to interested “sex-buddies” without commitment. Jennifer Connolly, as Erica, explores much better the dramatic tensions of a person, who left her family for a reason, and wants desperately for her daughter to love her. Erica wants “a place for me”.

There are soap opera elements to this movie, and one has the feeling that all the melodrama is more suitable for television than for the cinema screen. Between stalking and pining, Bill has casual sex with his married neighbour next door, and his behaviour is not a good lesson for his two children, who are out of control.

The movie takes the viewer on a whirl-wind tour of relationship difficulties. In the sweep of its running-time, it canvasses marriage and divorce, love and hate, love-lost and love-found, love-rediscovered, good and bad role-modelling (for parents and siblings), and frustrated behaviour among troubled offspring.

The scripting of the film is clever, sharp and at times insightful, the acting is impressive, and the movie has strong entertainment appeal. However, the film, despite its stylish look, lacks a coherent moral message. It seems to be saying one should get on with life in the best possible way. Leaving the movie’s sexual escapades and drug-taking aside, Bill ill-advisedly says to his son, that life is the sum of one’s experiences – so “go get some”. All of the film’s characters, except Lou, are touched by that brush. The movie delves thoughtfully into relationships that matter, but pulls away from any detailed exploration of the responsibilities of the choices in life that its characters have made.