Stuck in Love (2012)

I found this to be a charming romantic comedy, despite the improbable fact that there are two, soon to be three published authors in the mix.  I would love to think that it was so common to get a book or story published that pretty much any one who wrote well could accomplish the task, but that has always been rare and is only more so now that things in print seem to be increasingly rare.  It is like a return to the 19th century, except with the internet.  So skip over that and enjoy the rest of the movie.  Please note, I have a relatively serious weakness for the indie romance, and all that follows should be read with that in mind.

William Borgens (Greg Kinnear) is an unhappily divorced man who lives with his dysphoric son Rusty (Nat Wollf).  William may have a regular roll in the hay with his much younger neighbor, but what he really wants is to have his ex-wife Erica (Jennifer Connelly) back.  So badly that he regularly sets a place for her at holiday dinners, despite the fact it has been three years.  Which is a very bad example for his children--and they point that out.  His daughter Samantha (Lily Collins) is his exact opposite.  She is relationship phobic, and has made a literary career of kiss and tell 21st century style.  She wants no sex that involves entanglements, and you can see watching her parents where she might have developed an aversion to emotions that lead to the kind of pain her father is in.  She hates her mother for it, and she runs from intimacy like it was contagious.  As a  result bit she and her brother are getting involved in their first real loves simultaneously.  The movie is occasionally funny, occasionally wise, and occasionally absurd, but all in all, very enjoyable.