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"I don’t feel like I fit into this family," Tim Travis (Emile Hersh) confesses near the end of Dan Harris’s debut feature. Who would want to? His older brother commits suicide before the opening titles can finish. His dad (Jeff Daniels) wanders about unshaven in a fog of prescription drug and alcohol, stirring only to be abusive. His mother (Sigourney Weaver) wanders in a fog of bitterness and denial, stirring only to spew venom at the woman next door, with whom she has an unaccountable longstanding grudge. His older sister is away at college, but when she returns for holidays, it’s clear she’s messed up too, with perhaps some incest issues. That may also be the case with Tim and his mom and their intense and ambiguous bond. Tim is a rebel with too many causes, and his family are the ordinary people of the 21st century, but Harris makes of this loaded melodrama a witty, poignant black comedy. Seemingly episodic, it resolves with a series of revelations that are neither manipulative nor contrived. Hersh puts in a career-making performance, and Weaver and Daniels have never been better. (112 minutes)
BY PETER KEOUGH
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