Lots of adults have a childhood best friend with whom they grew apart. For Vanessa (Alia Shawkat), who narrates this dramatic comedy, that friend was Nina (Leighton Meester), who eventually fell in with a more popular crowd and left the North Jersey suburbs for more glamorous places. But Vanessa has kept up with Nina because her parents (Hugh Laurie, Catherine Keener) are the neighbors and best friends of Nina’s parents (Alison Janney, Oliver Platt). The theme of friends growing apart is regrettably minor; instead, the main plot involves Nina’s quickly discovered romance with David, who is Vanessa’s father (Laurie).
The older actors don’t look like the parents of the younger ones playing their daughters, but they’re all pretty good, and all of the characters are fairly sympathetic, though the prime trait of Janney’s is being overbearing. Meester does both the wayward daughter thing and the flirty seductress thing well. You can tell how much fun Nina is having when David introduces her to friends they run into at a restaurant. Nina invites the surprised couple to sit down; their awkward declining of this offer is as amusing to Nina as it will no doubt be to viewers of the film. The potentially heavy subject matter is generally given this sort of light touch, as befits a film that is mostly a comedy. However, the story concludes realistically and in reasonably satisfying fashion.
IMDb link
viewed 10/11/12 7:10 pm at Ritz Five and reviewed 10/11/12
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