With a somewhat wired opening, Sam (Chris Pine) is in a fast talking business world when he gets a stop-all-noise
phonecall. His father has just died. So Sam and his bug-eyed girlfriend (Olivia Wilde) hightails it to California to be
with his mother (Michelle Pfeiffer). Immediately the film moves from fast to strained for Sam, who has an unknown tension with his mother (that’s never really established why) but not of the type where people suggest “emotions run high at wedding and funerals.) Something is
seriously wrong here, and it doesn’t help that Sam’s father has left him a shaving kit full of $150,000 intended for someone else….his other child, Frankie (Elizabeth Banks) a single angry mother raising a wise-mouth eleven year old son (Joseph Wise). Frankie could have been likeable…flawed people often are, but she’s not. She’s annoying and reckless….and he’s one of those stereotypical know-it-all kids suddenly controlling all dramatic movie screens.
But the biggest problem with this film is it doesn’t allow us to sink in organically. It’s choppy, confused and seems to settle its scenes with a loud soundtrack. It’s not sure what it’s trying to be – a drama? A comedy? A mess? And it relies heavily on a loosely executed subplot of Sam losing his job back east as a crutch of a reason he might stay on the west coast (instead of maybe because his dying mother and new sister and nephew might need him.)
Pfeiffer takes on a Deep End of the Ocean roll though her position in this is clear, and in this film, she’s in control of why she made her choices. Or so she thinks. The premise is a good one, and with the right director and screenwriter, this could have been a good movie, but it’s
not. One and a half tiaras