Said anger belongs primarily to the mother of four daughters ranging in age from high school to college senior, and secondarily to the four daughters, after the husband and father absconds with his Swedish secretary. The mother takes solace first from a bottle of vodka (three bottles per shopping trip), and then from her next-door neighbor and new drinking buddy, a former Detroit Tiger and current talk-radio host. The daughters, three of them still residing under the family roof, are a persistent handful. Joan Allen, in something of a tour de force, and something also of a tour de farce, really does convey the juggling act, the balancing act, of multiple motherhood; and yet at the same time there's an element of circusy spectacle in the performance, aggravating the domestic disharmony, drowning out the accompaniment, hogging the spotlight. Evan Rachel Wood, Erika Christensen, Keri Russell, and Alicia Witt make up an attractive brood, even beyond mere appearance. And a slightly goofball Kevin Costner, a Detroit Tiger in For Love of the Game as well, has beneficially chased away his chronic clouds. The writer and director, Mike Binder, is a member of the cast, too, as Costner's radio producer, an average guy with average looks and average needs and average scruples, and in that role Binder is convincingly average. Behind the camera, he aspires to much more. (A good deal more, certainly, than in such undistinguished earlier credits as Blankman and Indian Summer.) Gripped by the American terror of dullness, keeping one eye on his cast of characters and the other eye on a hypothetically squirming audience, he maps out his plot and hones his dialogue as if he were racking up points on a pinball machine, with all attendant flashing lights and ringing bells. He wants to make an impression, and immediately he wants to make another. (He will not even balk at a fantasy of an exploding head.) Such a quest for constant diversion can hardly help but produce sporadic diversion, roughly on a par with subpar James Brooks. (2005) — Duncan Shepherd
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