Heart-rending melodrama mostly pleasant diversion

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DREAMWORKS Sam (Chris Pine) gets to know Frankie (Elizabeth Banks) and her son Josh (Michael D�Addario) in People Like Us. (TRIBUNE MEDIA MCT)

PEOPLE Like Us is that increasingly rare kind of film: an adult drama. The filmmakers seem so nervous about this prospect that they fill the movie with action-film editing and a camera that moves so restlessly through domestic life that you'd think it lost its keys.

At one point, I was sure the dramatic opening of a door was going to reveal a Klingon, not complicated memories of a deceased parent.

That's not a coincidence: People Like Us is directed by Alex Kurtzman, who co-wrote the script with Roberto Orci (along with Jody Lambert). Kurtzman and Orci are the same duo who wrote the 2009 Star Trek reboot, as well as the blockbusters Mission: Impossible III and Transformers, and the TV series Alias and Fringe.

If, in their knack for suspense, they imbue People Like Us with impatience, they also keep it entertaining, rendering a familiar, heart-rending melodrama as a gauzy and mostly pleasant diversion.

Sam (Chris Pine, who played Capt. Kirk in Star Trek) is a slick New York deal-maker, specializing in bartering excess goods between companies. But trouble (and a federal trade investigation) loom after he ruins a shipment of tomato soup by cheaply skimping on transportation. His emotional remove is clear when his girlfriend, Hannah (the striking but underused Olivia Wilde), informs him that his father has died, and he replies: "What's for dinner?"

Hannah drags Sam to the Los Angeles funeral, where his mother (Michelle Pfeiffer) greets him with both a hard slap to the face and directions to the linens. It's a rare return home for Sam, who ignored his mother during his dad's illness and harbours a long festering anger for his uninterested father, a 1960s record producer.

The lawyer executing the will (Philip Baker Hall) informs Sam that he's inherited his father's extensive vinyl collection, with the advice to, "Get your groove back." He's also given a shaving kit stuffed with $150,000 and instructions to give it to an unfamiliar name: Josh Davis.

The revelation is that Sam's father had a secret, second family, of which is now left his daughter, Frankie (Elizabeth Banks), and her sarcastic mop-head 11-year-old, Josh (Michael Hall D'Addario). She's a recovering alcoholic working as a bartender and trying desperately to keep their lives together, a feat made harder by Josh's troublemaking at school.

Sam first shadows Frankie and after a few encounters (he feigns being a fellow Alcoholics Anonymous member), he quickly becomes a close friend to Frankie and Josh. He's reluctant to confess their shared father or bequeath the money, a suspense prolonged artificially.

People Like Us (a generically meaningless title) owes much of its charm to Banks. She enters the film like a powerhouse, striding in heels and a black mini-skirt to the principal's office to pick up her son, while chastising a pair of ogling students: "I know your mothers," she says. As a working single mom, she plays Frankie as heavy with the bitterness of being abandoned by her absent father.

There's little reason Banks shouldn't be a top star in Hollywood: She's funny, sexy and sharp. The movies haven't always lived up to her talent -- TV's 30 Rock is still the best example of her capabilities.

Pine is a more standard protagonist, with a handsome if bland swagger. Still, he keeps the film grounded. The weakest hinge to the film is Pfeiffer, who has little motherly chemistry with Pine and whose character feels underwritten.

People Like Us is partly based on the life of Kurtzman, whose father was Dennis Lambert, a producer for the Commodores and others. The film, Kurtzman's directorial debut, is too shiny and drenched in California glow to feel very personal. It grows increasingly sentimental, and by the end, lays it on especially thick.

It works best in its moments of humour amid the soapy plot: the discovery and awakening of a sibling relationship, forged as much over tacos as through blood.

-- The Associated Press

Other voices

Selected excerpts from reviews of People Like Us.

People Like Us is informed by real feelings uncorked like a lost bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon hidden away in a dark corner of a private wine cellar.

-- Rex Reed, New York Observer

The movie develops into a painful story of one generation inflicting its selfish compromises on the next.

-- J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader

A good cast goes a long way in masking narrative and stylistic flaws.

-- Geoff Berkshire, HitFix

People Like Us is a certifiable adult drama built atop sturdy thematic supports, a rare enough item these days...

-- Nick Pinkerton, Village Voice

As overcranked as it is -- the film is directed as if it were an action drama, with two or three times more cuts than necessary -- People Like Us has a persuasive emotional pull at its heart that's hard to deny.

-- Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter

Genuine emotions barely win out over soapy complications in People Like Us.

-- Justin Chang, Variety

-- Compiled by Shane Minkin

Movie Review

People Like Us

Starring Chris Pine and Elizabeth Banks

Globe, Grant Park, Polo Park

PG

114 minutes

Three and a half stars out of five

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 29, 2012 D6