The movie starts out sappy sweet…a mother (Diane Keaton) and her daughter (Elisabeth Moss)are in a car crying because they’ve just dropped off Keaton’s OTHER daughter and grandchild to the airport. Keaton is married to a surgeon (Kevin Kline) and they have a perfect house in the perfect countryside. Everything is boring and life-moving-along-as-normal in Denver.
But when they fall upon a homeless dog – “Freeway” – named for where they find him, life becomes a world of more sappy-sweet happiness. Enter Dianne Wiest as Kline’s sister and her new beau (Richard Jenkins) who seemingly wants Wiest for her money in order to build a pub in Omaha – an English pub with warm beer.
When “Freeway” the rescue dog goes missing the story gets some backbone, though the acting of these usually quality characters falls nothing short of embarrassing. And we don’t really care about any of them. They lack depth; appearing more like caricatures of themselves on the screen. But supposedly, or so the plot goes, they’re about to discover who they really are, but Keaton over-performs like a woman going through some hormonal issues. Honestly, I don’t blame the dog for running away. One and a half tiaras