Purely Joyful Movie!

Good start, but then it gets ruined

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Maybe 6.5 or even a seven - yes, it's been done before - rouge, selfish father who leaves wife and child - (Jeff Bridges and Justin Timberlake, respectively)and contrived circumstances unite father and son on a road trip.Not very subtle, but it works - there's just enough humor and the screen play is just good enough to pull it off. I rented this primarily to see if Justin could act. Neither he nor the movie will go down in movie making history for this, but I thought he did fine.Kate Mara plays Justin;s girlfriend/lost love and Maureen Steenburgen is the ex-wife who never lost her love for Jeff Bridges. Cameo's by Ted Danson (Maureen's real life hubby), Lyle Lovett, Harry Dean Stanton also keep it interesting.**Spoilers** A feel good movie with a happy ending, redemption, lost love found, acceptance, forgiveness.

This movie has it all revealed in the title; we have the typical road movie, the open situations that need closure, the family gathering when almost-tragedy might happen, the girl that almost got away, the father-son estranged yet reliable liaison, the change in the hero's mind along the way.And above that, it has the sparkling dialog, Jeff Bridges (I just love how he cries in most of his roles, because he can and he's so damn good), the wise replies that might (or not) mean something to you at some point. The open spaces, and a feel-good impression that will make it perfect for a late evening when you just don't feel like sleeping. Or you would feel like taking a long walk somewhere, only it would be wiser not to in the middle of the night.I probably shouldn't give it a ten, but grades "don't mean nothing" to me, it's all about whether I liked it or not, and I sure did like it.

I thought this was an excellent movie with a great cast and good script. I only saw the preview on another movie I rented and had not heard of it before then. After watching it I'm surprised it didn't do better.Justin Timberlake is a baseball player thats lost his passion and isn't playing so well. His mother is in the hospital needing heart surgery but refuses to sign a waiver for surgery without first having his estranged father there. This is where the fun starts. He flies to Ohio with his friend played by Kate Mara to meet up with and talk his father into coming down to Houston for the surgery. And the real laughs begin from there...Jeff Bridges did an amazing job with his character and it just sent this movie a top spot on my movie list. Very good film, very funny but still carried a heartwarming story well. A definite must-see and should really be given more attention.

This movie didn't do much for me. It's the story of another dysfunctional family, without much happening to make the family very interesting. I guess the theme is that no matter how rotten your Dad is, he's still your Dad, and can be loved and forgiven. I suppose that's true enough, as long as there are some good memories to outweigh the bad. But the Dad in this movie doesn't seem to have left too many good memories behind.I like Jeff Bridges on screen. He's made some very good movies ("Fearless" for instance), and some that didn't impress me much ("The Contender", "Sea Biscuit", "The Fisher King"), but no matter the quality of the film, he always seems to rise above the material. In this movie, he plays such a rotten piece of work - a self-centred, boozy, sleazy, loud-mouthed jock living in the past - that I started to see the less redeeming features of Bridges himself. Maybe that just proves what a good job he did.Justin Timberlake is OK, but he doesn't inject much life into his character. What the lovely Lucy (the totally gorgeous Kate Mara) sees in this sour, sulky, colourless character is beyond me. With her knowing grin, a flash of the eyes, a shake of the head, she makes it obvious that she understands this lot only too clearly. I felt like shouting "Run, Lucy, run! Don't get mixed up with these screw-ups! You can do better! Much better!" I could have added, but didn't, "Pick me!"Basically, I found the film bland and un-involving. I gave it 5/10, and every one of the 5 points derives from the presence of Mara, who brings not just loveliness to the screen, but there's a fire in her eyes and a sense of personality that few others are capable of projecting.