SummaryThings couldn't be going better for Harry (Jonathan Sadowski) and Grace (Sara Paxton), a young New York City couple in love, until Grace's mother (Connie Nielsen) turns Harry's world upside down.
SummaryThings couldn't be going better for Harry (Jonathan Sadowski) and Grace (Sara Paxton), a young New York City couple in love, until Grace's mother (Connie Nielsen) turns Harry's world upside down.
Although the resulting tonal shifts between funny and serious aren't always executed as seamlessly as they might be, Khoury deserves props for defying rom-com conventions more often than he succumbs to them.
Writer-director J.C. Khoury’s second feature is a romantic dramedy featuring a conventionally appealing cast that’s squandered on a dissatisfingly derivative premise.
Even a brisk running time, barely topping 80 minutes, is too long to ask audiences to stay in the company of these characters and their terrible self-inflicted predicaments.
While a defter touch could have made the marriage between fizzy romance and domestic drama work, All Relative fails to engage because the emotional connection between all parties—Harry and Grace, Harry and Maren, Grace and Maren—is weak to nonexistent.
All Relative requires a strenuous suspension of disbelief. As Harry struggles through this surreality toward love, his mother-daughter love triangle yields few laughs and instead delivers disappointing moments.
Does Hollywood have so little to offer women that well-regarded actresses feel obliged to accept demeaning indies like this flatly unfunny, morally vacant comedy?