Good first effort...but not great.

Rating: 7/10 (6 September 2004)

This movie is definitely worth seeing. However, in its tempo and style it reminded me a lot of another flick set in New Jersey...The Station Agent. The characters have quirky and often likable flaws (except perhaps for the gravedigger, but that is o.k. too). The movie does start out slow, with the audience straining to care about the characters, but it eventually settles in. The movie sorta seems like the Big Chill for twenty or thirtysomethings, and in that sense it is somewhat cliché of all such movies (i.e. a flawed character comes home to confront a death, and magically discovers something they've been missing over the weekend). Portmann and Braff were good, but Ian Holm is completely wasted in an undeveloped father figure and is a long way from the Shire or Henry V.