Always interesting actor Dennis Quaid plays Lawrence Wetherhold an intellectually sharp but increasingly disengaged Victorian literature professor who still carries the emotional scars left by the death of his wife. He wallows in unhappiness and is at sea with dealing with his teenage daughter Vanessa, played by Ellen Page with some of the same aspects of acting we observed in “Juno” but basically a different type character. Vanessa is rebellious and sharp-tongued but as unhappy as Juno was chirpy. There is also a wall between Lawrence and his son James (Ashton Holmes). Lawrence also has a slacker of an adoptive brother Chuck (Thomas Haden Church), with whom he has a personality clash, but who shows up to live with him. Chuck and Vanessa find things in common and have an alliance of sorts, and Church does some appealing picture-stealing.

A major new element comes onto the scene when a relationship flares between Lawrence and a former student, Janet, now a doctor, played by Sarah Jessica Parker. Janet once had a crush on her professor. Their romance proves both stimulating and problematical, as issues of personality must be worked out, to say nothing of the hostility Vanessa harbors toward Janet.