See Girl Run

There's no interesting story here. It's boring and predictable. The acting is boring. The dialogue is full of clichés.

Avoid.

I LOVE indie romance dramas with just the right amount of somber and melancholy ("Garden State" was a dream come true for me), but this missed the mark on so many levels. Hence the current "5" rating on IMDb.

Strong points: ADAM SCOTT!!! I love this guy in everything he does (esp. The Vicious Kind, "Parks," Walter Mitty, and Friends with Kids). He knocks it out of the park with this role as well. And Jeremy Strong (perfect in "Humboldt County") did as good as he could with the excessively maudlin role he was given here.

Weak points: The story and the rest of the casting, esp. Robbin Tunney as the female lead. Tunney is the ONLY other female lead in a romantic role that I have ever disliked (the other was Taylor Schilling, who was fine in Orange is the New Black, but seemed way too cold and authoritative in "The Lucky One"). Tunney just doesn't have that inviting or relatable attribute that female leads need in rom-coms/drams. She seems more suited to playing a cynical "mean friend" or "bad guy" - far from the vulnerable "girl" you'd expect to be "running."

As far as the story, it is just lacking. As we find out in the very beginning, girl runs home because she's not happy with her marriage, where her old flame lives; then she stays there. None of the events that unfold while she's home are very interesting or entertaining.

It seemed to be a perfect contender for another great indie rom-dram, but missed the mark completely.

5/10

If you like movies about crying-baby adults, you may find yourself crying after watching this movie. Run away from this.

Emmie (Robin Tunney) is in her thirties and is a typical adult--she has left her small hometown in Maine to go to college, marry, and settle in New York.

Jason (Adam Scott) was Emmie's high school boyfriend and has done even worse since he and Emmie separated for college. He's broke, pursuing a dead end career as a painter of frogs and moonlighting as a server in Portland, Maine, where he's dating his co-worker.

The movie opens with Emmie, asking herself whether she made the wrong choice in her marriage with Graham and trying out for a reality show that connects people with their old lovers. The show contacts Jason, who now thinks Emmie wants to get back together and sends her flowers and hand written notes (oh how romantic life can be in the absence of facebook). Emmie has an argument with her husband and decides to flee her marriage to meet up with Jason, who is completely adorable and endearing when it comes to Emmie (much less so with his current girlfriend). Will Emmie abandon her marriage or go back to her husband Graham?

This is a coming-of-age movie for adults. The main characters in the movie (Emmie, Jason, Graham, and Emmie's brother Brandon) are in their thirties and, with the exception of Graham, are still deciding if they're ready to grow up. The movie centers on the dilemma the characters face to remain young (have passionate affairs, work minimum wage jobs, and mooch off their parents) or become stereotypical responsible adults (pay bills, stick it out in a less than idyllic marriage). If you've never had to face this choice in your own life, this movie might not make sense. For the rest of us growing older in the hipster culture of America, it's sure to hit a chord.

I enjoyed the fact that this movie shows the reality of marriage. Typical movies glamorize every aspect of love, but in real life and in marriage, it's not always like that. In this movie, the couple argues when Emmie takes a poo and Graham insists she shower before they have sex. Gross, but real. I also loved the side story revolving around Emmie's grandmother getting a new boyfriend 15 years after the death of her husband. It reinforces the theme that it's never too late to rediscover romance and find love.

See Girl Run (2012)

Robin Tunney is pretty terrific in this small budget big impact story of a young married woman still obsessed with her high school boyfriend. Everything depends on Tunney's ability to make her character, Emmie, believable and complex, and she pulls it off.

Around her are her husband (a boring Jeremy Strong) and her ex-boyfriend (a charming Adam Scott). Right there you have the set-up because you really kind of want Emmie to go with the charming dream she left behind instead of the routine life with her routine (but nice) hubby.

There is a slow easy plainness to this movie that may not appeal to some. It has to make sure the ordinary doesn't tip into the dull, and generally it does that. Partly it depends on some strong secondary characters, including her mother and father and comically depressed brother in Maine, where she visits. And partly it depends on the romantic high stakes of the plot.

For me the final emotional turning point is too pushed on us, too sudden, too clever by half. For others it will seem beautiful and appropriate. (You'll have to see it to see.) But when it all gets to where it's going it feels about right.

Tunney has done a lot of lesser movies and some better t.v. over the years (including over a hundred episodes of "The Mentalist") and she really deserves a big break into some kind of serious movie role. Scott, likewise, has a mixed career (I liked him a lot in "The Vicious Kind" which has a similar production level as this one) and he, too, will likely have a big breakthrough one of these years. The two don't, however, have much time together on screen here, which would have been interesting.

If there are limitations to the whole enterprise they might belong to the writer/director, Nate Meyers, who does a credible but predictable job, revealing (I guess) his short resume (this is his second film, with one more in the works). But it is partly the simplicity of the plot an editing that lets the genuine warmth of the actors come through. For that it's worth a look.