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The result is fairly silly slapstick, but Alda, hair disheveled and brow knit with stubborn intent, is both fierce and quietly heartbreaking.
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75The smart indie comedy Diminished Capacity deals with three kinds of dementia: those relating to aging, concussions and being a Chicago Cubs fan. Tying those three things together is a task that the witty script does with surprising adroitness.
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70All of the actors convey the ebullience of old friends convening for an on-the-cheap reunion. The shared good spirits result in a diminutive comedy with a bounty of charm and shrewd humor.
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63A risky, not entirely successful comedy about mental disability, based on the novel by Sherwood Kiraly.
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63A road movie that never really takes off.
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50Alda actually is kind of interesting as the mentally unstable uncle, but Broderick appears to be sleepwalking. Madsen has little to do, and everyone else plays things far too broadly.
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50A mild pleasure from one end to the other, but not much more. Maybe that's enough, serving as a reminder that movie comedies still can be about ordinary people and do not necessarily have to feature vulgarity as their centerpiece.
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50Striving for low-key character comedy, Diminished Capacity ends up diminishing its returns.
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It's the kind of lite movie you go and see with your mom, and she'll say she liked it--but then a year later, you're both trying to remember what it was even about. Two and a half shrugs.
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50Touches earnestly on heart-heavy issues of loss: loss of memory, of love and, perhaps because of the local angle, of (or rather by) the Chicago Cubs. But Mr. Kinney, a founder of the Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago and a familiar face from film and television, never gives his movie a sustained pulse.
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50A God's little acre's worth of premeditated eccentricity runs through Diminished Capacity, a triumphant losers-in-Cornville comedy starring Matthew Broderick in a role he might have phoned in, and Alan Alda as a combination Jed Clampett and Raymond Babbitt.
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50When a respected actor moves into the director's chair, he can usually draw a pretty good cast, which is certainly the case here... But Sherwood Kiraly's slight script only makes this embarrassment of riches seem more embarrassing.
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50Broderick, Alda, and Madsen are all fine--and Alda has some poignant moments as he realizes the implications of his forgetfulness--but their presence in a movie like this reaffirms its conventionality.