With getting a movie off the ground so difficult in Hollywood, 50-year-old musician-filmmaker Jake (Koteas) has decided to shoot something autobiographical. He hires a handsome actor (Vogel) to play himself, but keeps interfering so he can relive his youth. He also includes versions of himself at 17 (Railsback), 30 and 40 (both Koteas), showing his various stages of reinvention. Meanwhile, Jake's kids (Mantegna and Buchanan) continually interrupt things, as does the love of his life, Joanne (Liberato and Seymour), his best pal Beth (Madsen) and his last girlfriend Sheryl (Leigh).

This is a jarring series of scenes circling in on themselves with little connective logic. Even with present-day Jake narrating to-camera, it's not easy to follow. Random versions of characters both living and dead wander in and out of each scene, trying to steal the spotlight from each other. Plus continual on-screen quotes from filmmakers and philosophers, many of which have nothing to do with the story. The ultimate message about accepting life as it comes is decent, but it's expressed through trite moralising ("be the person you designed").

Goldberg's writing and direction strain to be witty and observant, cranking up the wackiness without finding any actual humour. He clearly wants everything to be insightful, but he's merely throwing out existential questions without scratching the surface. There's also the fact that, with Jake portrayed in so many disparate incarnations, we never actually have a sense of him as a person, so we never care about his soul-searching.

All of this plays out like It's a Wonderful Life thrown into a shredder. There are some strong scenes along the way, nicely played by the cast. But it's so self-aware that any raw emotions or genuine observations are undermined by another wink at the camera. In this sense, the film feels like Goldberg's mid-life crisis project. But since he's in the middle of it, he hasn't yet found anything meaningful to say or a coherent way to express it.

themes, language

30.Sep.13 rff