May have limited appeal for anyone over the age of 25

Rating: 5/10 (28 February 2007)

This movie about Andrew Largemen, a depressed young man in his early 20s who returns to his hometown after nine years for the funeral of his mother, has all the feeling of being written by someone who just graduated from film school. Someone who has seen a lot of movies, but has not experienced much of life.
It tries hard to be quirky but winds up being pretentious and irritating. One of the first scenes shows our confused and depressed young hero in bed in a totally white room with no furniture but the bed and a telephone. Maybe this is supposed to symbolize the sterility of his shut down emotional state? Anyway, Andy is so affectless for the first third of the movie that his mood rubbed off on me. I wanted this thing to move on rather than dwell on these self-absorbed slackers.
Things did pick up a bit when Sam (Natalie Portman) appeared on the scene, but she was not able to rise above the script. Consider this exchange:
Andrew: This hurts so much.
Sam: Yeah, I know. But that is life. Nothing else, that's life you know. It's real, sometimes it f**king hurts. Yeah, it's all we have.
It's embarrassing.
When one of the characters asks if Andy has ever read "Brave New World," and tries to remember the author, he first tries "Aldous something," then is finally convinced that it's "Aldous Huxtible." That's not a conversation anyone is ever likely to have had, except perhaps on a TV sitcom.
Then there is the climatic scene where Andy has a heart-to-heart with his dad. Love has brought Andy to life and made a man out of him, except that that scene is totally unconvincing.
There are some humorous scenes and the filming is professional, but I think the overriding philosophy was to trot out some attractive young people, introduce a love theme, throw in some odd behavior, play some guitar music in the background, and call it an art film.
How Ian Holm ever got involved in this is a mystery.