MOVIE REVIEW - People Like Us

From a distance, People Like Us looks like a lot of other movies. A bunch of mid-level stars, with a seemingly sappy script and nothing really new to offer. Looks can be deceiving.

People Like Us stars Chris Pine, Elizabeth Banks, Olivia Wilde, and Michelle Pfeiffer. Harmless enough on the surface. These are all mid-range actors, or slightly past the best work stage of thier respective careers actors. But the real star of this movie is the movie. A really good script, and an original idea that doesn't go too far off the trail, and stay centered and on point.

Meet Sam (Pine). He is a 30ish wheeler-dealer of a salesman who is so busy trying to score his next dollar, he forgets that life is more than just a paycheck. He has horrible people and relationship skills He is dating Hannah (Wilde) and living in New York City. His hippie-musician father dies in Los Angeles, leaving his wife (Pfeiffer) behind. Sam tries hard not to go to the funeral, but does. There he again botches his meeting with his mom, who has problems of her own.

He then learns from his late-fathers lawyer that his dad has left $150,000 in cash for a sister Sam has from another woman that he doesn't know. The sister, Frankie (Banks) is about the same age as Sam, and she is a total mess. She is a single-mother of an 11 year old boy. She is also a recovering alchoholic, a bartender, and way down on her luck with has a very checkered past, and a difficult son. But she is very fun, and funny, and wants better for herself. But she constantly gets in her own way.

How will Sam track her down, and how will he tell her that he is her brother? And how will he tell her that the father that abandoned her when she was just a little girl, has come back from the dead and drop this huge money on her? And can Sam and Frankie have a relationhip out of the blue? That's People Like Us.

Elizabeth Banks has been getting a whole lot of work lately. Some good roles, some not so much. I loved her in Man On A Ledge, but she was miscast and misused in The Hunger Games. But here she is spot on, and gives the performace of her career thus far. She is terrific as the troubled Frankie. Although Pine is fine here, and so is the rest of the cast, this is Banks' movie. One bit of fumbling though, I am a big Olivia Wilde fan, but here she is probably overcasted. Hannah is an important, but small role, and it seems that Wilde is shoved to the side for much of this flick. It's no ones fault, just overcasted.

There is a fantastic soundtrack in this movie that isn't overdone, but used very creatively, and helps create the character of Sams father without him being in the movie. Kudos too to young Michael Hall D'Addario. He plays the young 11-year old son of Frankie, Josh, and is very very good as this strange but likeable kid.

People Like Us. Good script and a good diversion right now at the movies. Go see Elizabeth Banks own this movie. Well worth a ticket or two.