This is what happens when a Hollywood filmmaker looks up a word like "allegory." Irwin Winkler’s movie opens with George Monroe (Kevin Kline) pissing into the Pacific, and it’s downhill from there. In short order George loses his job building models at an architectural firm (the computers make them cheaper, and movies like this might persuade the studios to do likewise) and discovers he has only four months to live. So he resolves to tear down the old shack he lives in (bequeathed to him by his own abusive father) and build his dream house (on property that looks to be worth the multi-million-dollar budget of this movie) and in so doing reconcile with his punked-out, teenage loser of a son and maybe even his ex-wife (Kristin Scott-Thomas). He’s rebuilding his "life," you see. Although the film is notable for its fine acting (Kline, despite the woes of Job, is always funny, never maudlin, kind of a moribund version of Kevin Spacey in American Beauty) and unembarrassed sex, the shameless manipulativeness of it all calls to mind the more woeful aspects of Field of Dreams and Pay It Forward.