The reclusive author (Jeff Daniels) of the best-selling Me and God, cornering “ten percent of the God market,” slowly yet suddenly comes out of his shell at the twentieth anniversary of the book’s publication. Writer and director John Hindman, owing a good deal to As Good As It Gets (although Jeff Daniels is very much his own grump), shies from the big issues in preference for the characters’ individual little eccentricities and frailties, democratically distributed: the overprotective single mother (Lauren Graham), the recovering alcoholic bookstore owner (Lou Taylor Pucci), his unregenerate alcoholic father (Thomas Roy), the fragile chiropractor’s receptionist (Olivia Thirlby), and the ditzy bookstore clerk (Kat Dennings, having little to work with in the way of lines). Some overly broad and forced comedy dents the charm. (2009) — Duncan Shepherd