A cliche festival

Rating: 2/10 (17 June 1999)

If you gave a class of fifth graders the assignment of writing a script outline for a story of an abrasive but somehow lovable middle-aged man, a young single mother and a dying gay man, they would come up with something like this. Opposites attract, people bond to each other while they're on the road as the characters learn how to love and about the value of accepting others. Both Helen Hunt and Jack Nicholson play characters who shift back and forth from normality to extreme neuroticism to suit the plot; for me, their characters were unbelievable. A great disappointment from James L. Brooks