Alan Rudolph's middle-class midlife-crisis comedy covers similar ground to a Fifties "women's picture": a devoted husband and father begins to suspect his wife of ten years, partner in his dental practice, and extracurricular opera buff, of carrying on an affair with a faceless somebody in a local production of Nabucco. The film does an excellent job of keeping track of the unrelenting responsibilities in parenting three well-differentiated little girls, permitting no let-up in a time of crisis, especially not when the flu makes the rounds of every family member in turn. Not high among the film's assets, however, are what could be considered its assertions of "independence" and "modernity," its separation from soap-operatic tradition: the sniggering title change from the original Jane Smiley book, The Age of Grief; the voice-over ruminations on teeth and mortality ("Teeth outlast everything. Death is nothing to a tooth"); the hip songtrack, a Rudolph trademark; the low-wattage leading players (the remote Campbell Scott, the pinched Hope Davis); the grainy flashbacks and flippant fantasy devices, most especially the recurring appearances of an unruly dental patient (Denis Leary) as a phantom confidant and kibitzer, visible and audible only to the husband. These are simply a part of the price to be paid by a moviegoer of the 21st Century. (2003) — Duncan Shepherd
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