Not to be confused with the charming 1992 romantic comedy starring Jami Gertz, this film is director Kevin Smith’s first foray into more mature material that does not contain his famous characters Jay and Silent Bob. It’s a winning, heartfelt film that warms its audience over by dealing with conflicting emotions in a truthful way.
The film follows high-powered PR man Ollie Trinke (Ben Affleck, GOOD WILL HUNTING) as he suffers the death of his wife (Jennifer Lopez, ANGEL EYES) forcing him to raise their daughter, Gertie (Raquel Castro, forthcoming LITTLE FUGITIVE), on his own. For Ollie, his fast paced life in the city is in total conflict with raising a child, so he enlists the help of his father (George Carlin, DOGMA). The film deals honestly with the issues of balancing work with family and the sacrifices we have to make when having kids.
The places where the film falters is at the beginning and somewhat toward the end. The parts with Affleck and Lopez are cliché and forced for laughs. But this is quickly forgotten because the heart of the film is in the middle. The story is really about the love of a father for his child and this film is not cliché about the truth of those emotions. Adding to the strength of the middle is Liv Tyler playing Maya, a video store clerk who strikes up a friendship with Ollie. Affleck and Tyler’s rapport is great. I was also impressed with the performance of Carlin, who I’ve never really seen as an actor until now.
The end of the film is one big cliché with a job interview and school play on the same day. There’s little mystery to what is going to happen, but the true emotions of the characters make the standard ending forgivable. Plus there is a very unexpected cameo at the end, which provides one of the major highlights of the film.
I wasn’t sure about the film after 5 minutes, but by the end it had me totally won over. I like this touching step in the career of Kevin Smith, whose CLERKS and CHASING AMY are two of my favs. It will be interesting to see if he’ll revisit these characters at a later date, because there are so many possibilities because they’re so real.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
