Those characters include George (Kevin Kline), a model-maker who has just been fired from his job at an architect's firm. Robin (Kristin Scott Thomas), his ex-wife, now trapped in a loveless marriage with the absent-minded Peter (Jamey Sheridan). Sam (Hayden Christensen), George and Robin's angst-ridden, pierced, drug-using and self-loathing son. Coleen (Mary Steenburgen), the next-door neighbor, and her daughter Alyssa (Jena Malone). And Josh (Ian Somerhalder), Sam's friend and Alyssa's boyfriend, and a part-time pimp.
I cannot proceed further without informing you that very early in the movie (spoiler warning), George discovers he has about four months to live. For a time we assume he has Ali MacGraw's disease (the sicker you get the better you look), but a specific diagnosis is revealed toward the end.
George got a severance package when he was fired, and he determines to tear down the shack he lives in, build a new house, and win the love and respect of his son, all in one summer.
George's shack sits in a cul-de-sac high on a cliff overlooking the Pacific, in Orange County, Calif. Owners of ocean frontage in that area will be interested to learn that with 26 weeks of severance pay as a model-maker, George can afford to tear down his house and build another one. Some will be surprised he could even pay the taxes.
Any sentient being will be able to predict, after sizing up the characters and their establishing dialogue, that Sam will remove the hardware from his face and learn through hard work to become clean and sober and love his father. That Robin will want to share the experience with Sam (and her two young children by the second marriage), and will recall her early love for George. That Sam and Alyssa will become friends, and a little more. And that two unassigned characters of opposite genders are required by the laws of screenwriting to get together, even if one is a teenage pimp and the other a yuppie housewife.
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