Josh Friedlander

There is an 80s drama-comedy quality to the script, which manages to be dense enough and detailed enough to evoke a believable world. It's also well acted in a way that goes unrewarded (if you've got Alicia Vikander, Uma Thurman and Emma Thompson in bit roles, something has gone seriously right in your castng). Yeah, it's something of a fairy tale for men, and yeah it's not "serious" in the sense that it references the hardships of drugs, low wage jobs, unrequited love, and single motherhood without really exploring them, but not every movie needs to rip its hair out. This film manages somehow to be simultaneously light and heavy, exactly like the birthday cake that signals the start of Adam's redemption in the center of the film. The core messages -- that redemption is possible with contrition, that needing others is not weakness but strength, that no man is an island, and that excellence is a process, not an outcome -- are so rare in today's victimization-obsessed media that they are a healthful slap in the face. "If it's not perfect, you throw it away," Adam says at the start of his journey toward perfection. "We do what we do," he says at the end.