What We're Watching

REVIEW
This is a film you are instinctively, somewhere deep inside, programmed to hate. I mean loathe. You have the two mismatched, whey-faced, where-am-I-going indie drifters who clearly have no attraction apart from their mutual listlessness and they don't say anything much or profound but still, out of zero chemistry, manage to fall in love.

Then there's the by-numbers wacky, join-the-dots quirkiness. Brian Weathersby, at 28, wants to adopt a Chinese baby; he's beaten up repeatedly by a homeless man for no obvious reason (he's a metaphor, I guess). Deschanel's character is so light she's helium.

This is a one-star DVD waiting to happen and, after about half an hour, you're thinking - I could do the ironing to this and get something positive from the experience.

Then something happens. Maybe it's John Goodman's bullish dad or his opposite number Ed Asner, both playing rounded, funny characters as counterweights to the lightness. Maybe it's the depiction of normal family life - well, maybe not normal, but recognisable.

This film, it turns out, has charm. It has heart by the bucketload. It is moving and winning and you leave it wondering why they didn't warn you at the outset that it would be doing that to you.