It does seem a shame to cast three generations of compelling actresses as a dysfunctional family and then let them drown in a sea of tired character clichés and pop psychology babble. But that's exactly what happens in director Bruce Beresford's 2012 dramedy, a touchy-feely, throwaway vehicle for Jane Fonda, Catherine Keener, and Elizabeth Olsen ("Martha Marcy May Marlene"), who all try hard to rise above the broad brushstrokes that mark the superficial script by first-time screenwriters Joseph Muszynski and Christina Mengert. There isn't a single surprise that would make anyone reconsider the trite nature of the cross-generational conflict on display here, and Beresford doesn't help matters by the film's odd pacing where the basic set-up is handled in the first three minutes and then has characters go through character transformations in the most formulaic manner.
The story begins as Diane, an uptight Manhattan lawyer, is suddenly informed by her husband that he wants a divorce. Instead of discussing the matter, she packs up her two teenaged children – self-righteous vegan daughter Zoe and aspiring filmmaker son Jake – and visits her mother Grace up in Woodstock even though they haven't spoken in twenty years. Of course, Grace is Diane's exact opposite, a free spirit hippie artist, a political rabble-rouser and a successful pot dealer, so naturally conflict ensues immediately. While the perennially glum Diane glares judgmentally at Grace, both Diane and Zoe, of course, find love with local men who are their polar opposites - Diane with a laid-back carpenter and singer named Jude, Zoe with a sensitive butcher named Cole. In the meantime, Jake annoyingly videotapes life in Woodstock while crushing on a girl who works in a local coffee shop.
All the while, grandma Grace espouses spiritual bromides to everyone about how they need to live their lives to the fullest. It's a pleasure to see the 74-year-old Fonda look fit and loose-limbed as Grace even though I was getting the nagging sense she should be doing a lot more than play this dotty caricature. Playing against type, Keener seems particularly one-note as the mostly dour Diane, and some of her natural looseness as an actress would have helped bring more dimension to the role. Current indie "it girl" Olsen shows welcome moments of vulnerability that are severely blunted by Zoe's generally insufferable nature. Jeffrey Dean Morgan ("P.S. I Love You") appears to be specializing in rebound love interests, and he plays the emotionally accessible Jude with easy charm. Chace Crawford ("Gossip Girl") seems to be playing a younger version of the same male stereotype as Cole inexplicably entranced by Zoe.
Nat Wolff ("The Naked Brothers Band") provides mostly comic relief as hopelessly naïve Jake. I'm not sure why Rosanna Arquette is in the film since she's given next to nothing to do. The cinematography by Andre Fleuren nicely captures the bucolic landscape of upstate New York, but I found the original music by Spencer David Hutchings more intrusive than evocative. For his part, Beresford looks to be resuscitating key moments from Fonda's own film of parental alienation, "On Golden Pond", but a better story model would have been Lisa Cholodenko's "The Kids Are All Right" which lent layers of emotional complexity to a family unit challenged by a lack of forgiveness. After all, outside of this formulaic film, life just isn't as groovy as Grace would have you believe.
