God's New Plan

This is a movie that doesn't fool around. It treats one major concern; and other matters that, in real life, would normally occupy the characters from time to time are shunted aside. Annabeth Gish is a single mother of two working twelve-hour days as a nurse, but it seems that luckily her children are angelic, it's seldom evident that she has more than one patient to worry about, and somehow she can regularly find time to spare on her day off. Tom Irwin is rather a cipher as the ideal husband, whose parents are the ideal in-laws. I'm not even sure what he does for a living. (Does he run a bookstore? Well, it doesn't matter.) The dialogue goes straight to the point-- so much so, I'd say, that the actors and director deserve considerable credit for making it seem realistically conversational as they put it across. But they do put it across, and the movie grips you despite the sketchiness of almost all the characters. Annabeth Gish is always magnetic, and Katy Sagal courageously submits to an outward deglamorization to make her character all the more noble.