The film lacks for the empathy, curiosity, and sense of humor that are the defining characteristics of the Smiths’s music.
The trite way Southern life is represented makes the main character’s potential endgame seem stagnantly preordained and one-note.
Payne’s lovely, resonant fifth film does the hula on a lonely island of imminent death and wasted life.
On the basis of About Schmidt, you’d think Alexander Payne had a problem dealing with grief.