The septuagenarian Dustin Hoffman secures a role he can really sink his teeth into, or sharpen them on: a jazz pianist manqué who makes do composing musical scores for TV commercials. (Funny-sad sight of him staring intently at the little screen to appraise his latest opus for OxiClean.) With his job on the line, he flies off to London for the weekend wedding of his only daughter, has his rightful role in the ceremony usurped by the bride’s debonair stepfather, misses his return flight home, gets fired long-distance, and stays on to unload his troubles at some length to a customer-relations employee at Heathrow: Emma Thompson, towering over the leading man by four inches, and showering him with her special brand of lifelike artificiality. The social mortifications of the early stages are amusingly observed (the solitary white jacket in a crowd of black, an unremovable security device still affixed to the cuff, etc.), but the extended dialogue — a Before Sunrise, if you like, for the sunset years — that deepens overnight into a Serious Relationship sounds distinctly unorganic, forced forward solely by the determination of British writer-director Joel Hopkins to engineer a never-too-late romance for a couple of underemployed old pros. It’s all quite sweet, a little too-too. Eileen Atkins, Kathy Baker, Liane Balaban, James Brolin. (2008) — Duncan Shepherd
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