Who's in It: Adam Brody, Kristen Stewart, Meg Ryan, Olympia Dukakis
The Basics: The O.C. is canceled, and Seth has to leave town to clear his head. He goes to the Midwest, where everything good and right and true lives, and he moves in with his cranky-cute Grandma, whose main shtick is to run around saying, "I'm old! Time to die!" Then he gets "involved" with Meg Ryan and her teenage daughter. Meg's got cancer. The teen's got adolescence. Seth helps them, and they help him, and everyone is helped and hugged and healed and humored with ha-ha-ha's. Then? More hugs.
What's the Deal? Try as I might, I can't actually bring myself to hate this. I should. You should, too. It's dopey and would make many a Lifetime-watching woman throw up her hands in anger and say, "Look, there's a line past which I cannot go." But it's like hating a plate of cookies for being cookies. They're sweet, and they won't do you any favors, and you'll feel bad about yourself if you eat nothing but them for breakfast, lunch and dinner. But just one won't kill you. So have one. With some warm cocoa. And a hug.
Ryan's Return To Safe: I'm a little annoyed to see her here. A couple of years ago, she made a move in the direction of being in more unusual movies like Jane Campion's In the Cut, a film I dug quite a bit that was wrongly sold as an "erotic thriller." She got bad reviews for it, many that seemed based on little more than her newfound love of lip-enhancement procedures. Anyway, this feels like a retreat.
Just Once: I'd like to see a film where decent values and warm life lessons are allowed to be experienced by someone who lives in the Hollywood Hills. Because frankly, I've met more kind, tolerant, interesting, caring people in Los Angeles than I ever ran into back when I lived in the middle of the country. You'd think my neighborhood was all one big Less Than Zero cocaine-and-money binge if you only knew about the world from movies.
For Fans Of: Garden State, Big Eden and TV's Providence.