This is a pretty good romantic comedy that rises above its silly coincidence-ridden story structure. Or, the coincidences are far beneath the quality of the film. Either way, the rich dialogue, powerful performances, from Steve Carell, Julianne Moore, Ryan Gosling, and nuanced direction will surprisingly effortlessly persuade you to overlook the cheap sitcom circumstantial end-of-second-act crash. Sadly though, said impossible circus of happenstance will keep this A-quality film out of the A range.

Strong song selection and use of foot/leg shots to convey romance, etc. This makes a nice motif. The webbed-in baby-sitter crush goes a tad too far, and in fact, may be a bit extraneous, while maxing out the coincidence quota. Was that subplot created to give the film an “American Beauty” feel? That said, the son’s struggles with love (on its own) provides a nice accent to the dad's plight, but the two main plot lines are quite quality enough to drive the picture. In fact, they’re excellent.

Funny, emotive, and schmaltzy, too … it’s a nice flick. I laughed a lot, I even got choked up.

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