Moonlight Mile Review

Grief comedy is a narrow road, and for about forty minutes this one stays on it. Dustin Hoffman plays a father who copes by making his dead daughter's fiance a partner in the family real estate business, and Susan Sarandon plays a mother who copes by refusing every comfort offered her, including her own good manners. The two of them are funny in a way that never stops being uncomfortable, and Sarandon's readings at the memorial reception are the best thing here. Then the film loses its nerve.

Jake Gyllenhaal's Joe is handed a secret, a romance with Ellen Pompeo's bartender, a trial, and a closing courtroom speech, and the courtroom is where the whole thing collapses into the tidy public confession the earlier scenes were smart enough to avoid. Gyllenhaal is good at stunned politeness and less convincing once the script wants him articulate. Brad Silberling drew the story from a murder in his own life, which explains the precision of the small domestic detail, the boxes of wedding gifts, the father's forced cheer at the office, and does not excuse a third act that needs every wound closed inside one room.