When Terry’s husband skips town with his Swedish assistant, Terry (Joan Allen) is left to raise four teenage daughters and bond with her neighbor Denny (Kevin Costner) who drinking habits rival her own. Costner shines in a comeback role as a washed-up baseball star (a past character “Bill Durham” “Field of Dreams” he seems to relate to) who is disarming and believable. Initially one thinks the teen daughters (Alicia Witt, Evan Rachel Wood, Erika Cristensen, Kerri Russell) seem too self-efficient (minus any sibling rivalry) in the wake of dad’s disappearance, but then we realize this is reality for kids in a family of alcoholism. Each girl has a focus and a dream (for example Russell is a ballerina) much like a modern day “Little Women” yet their mother fights to keep them young, attempting to squelch their dreams in her own internal bitterness. Despite the movies refreshing plot, explorations and evolvement, the story moves with boredom – the scenes mundane. Never the less, the acting flawlessly succeeds at uncovering the mother/daughter growth in a family of divorce. And in this case, after a surprising twist; and then some.
