This ramshackle 2025 dramedy suffers from not only a generic title but also a disjointed screenplay that encompasses too many perspectives to present a compelling coming-of-age tale set nostalgically in the chaotic world of regional theatre in the late 1980's. The film follows the bickering Smart family. As the patriarch, Buddy is a willfully ambitious and optimistic theatre producer who uproots his family from Ohio to New Jersey. His no-nonsense wife Macy admires her husband's gumption but resents being forced to pick up the pieces of his perpetual failures. Their two boys are a study in opposites: older son Derrick is only interested in football and girls, while adolescent Lester is a true theatre nerd desperate for the limelight. Director Jon S. Baird and writer Steven Rogers seem to be interested in showing Les' vulnerable perspective of the family, but they keep bouncing among the other family members that the narrative felt diluted and strangely incomplete with the flamboyant Les the chief victim here. As Buddy and Macy, Bryan Cranston and Allison Janney are proven scene stealers who find key moments where they transcend the weak script but not enough. Chris Cooper makes a briefly effective impression as Macy's plainspoken farmer brother. Benjamin Evan Ainsworth does what he can as Les, though he sometimes comes across as a mere plot device, especially when he is speaking with the ghosts of stage legends. Jack Champion has the least to do as Derrick and makes him more vulnerable than the script demands. Unless you're diehard fans of Janney, Cranston, and Cooper, this is one to skip.
