Everyone can tell that Abby (played by screenwriter Jennifer Westfeldt) is adorable. Her parents dote on her. A jittery subway mugger is disarmed by her – literally. She has not managed to sell a single membership at the health club where she works, but she has the affection, esteem, and devotion of everyone who works (and works out) there. When Ira (Chris Messina) wanders in, she tells him not to bother with a membership and he is immediately smitten.

Yes, everybody loves Abby. That is a problem for Ira, who has to learn to trust his feelings for her and hers for him. But it becomes a problem for the audience, too. Westfeldt as screenwriter is a little too much in love with the character she has created for Westfeldt the actress, but a strong cast and its willingness to go beyond the usual conventions of romantic comedies keep us rooting for the young couple to find a happily ever after ending.

Just after they meet, Abby impulsively proposes to Ira and he accepts. Up to that point, Ira has had a terrible time making decisions. His psychotherapy, his doctoral thesis, and his romantic relationship have all stalled. He overthinks everything to the point of implosion.

But Abby is irresistible, because she appeals to Ira’s heart, not his head, because marrying her represents action and progress, and because he loves the feeling that he makes her happy. Most important, she represents that Life Force often found in romantic comedies, which frequently focus on an uptight character learning how much more there is to life from a free spirit.

As with her first film “Kissing Jessica Stein,” Westfeldt has written a clever screenplay with some zingy one-liners and sharp characterizations. It flirts with farce, even satire when the main characters and their multiple therapists all sit down in a big circle to talk things over. The final act becomes over-plotted when old and new relationships threaten to derail the happiness that so quickly came to Ira and Abby.

What keeps it all on course is its grounding in some important insights about relationships that are overlooked in movies that fade out after the couple gets together. This movie begins where most comedies end, allowing it to gently raise some thoughtful points about relationships. The very thing that first draws Ira to Abby, her ability to see the best in him, becomes the thing that frightens him. Does he love her for who she is, and not just for the vision of himself he enjoys in her eyes? The very thing he first loves about her, her ability to be happy, scares him, too. If she can be so easily delighted, how can he be sure he is special to her? Ira discovers that what can be most terrifying for him is not loving but allowing himself to be loved.

The movie benefits from an exceptionally strong line-up of supporting characters beautifully played by a top-notch cast. Fred Willard and Frances Conroy are Abby’s jingle-writer parents, so endlessly cheerful that they make Santa look grumpy. Ira’s therapist parents are played by Judith Light and Robert Klein, brittle as the ice clinking in their highballs. The hilarious parade of counselors includes “Seinfeld’s” Jason Alexander, “Saturday Night Live’s” Chris Parnell and Darrell Hammond, and the always-exquisite Donna Murphy. Maddie Corman displays all the expected neuroses but also some unexpected vulnerability as Ira’s ex. Ramon Rodriguez is nicely disconcerted as the subway mugger. Each of the characters captures our interest and attention. And both as screenwriter and as star, Westfeldt keeps the center of the story sweet and the movie as impossible to resist as its irrepressibly warm-hearted heroine.

Parents should know that the movie includes strong languages, drinking, references to drug abuse, and sexual references and non-explicit situations, including adultery.

Viewers who see this movie should talk about why it was so easy for Abby to connect to people. Why was it so hard for Ira to feel that he deserved love? What should they have talked about before getting married?

Viewers who enjoy this movie will also enjoy “Annie Hall” and “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”

I’m pretty sure that Jane Austen never thought of including a lesbian jumping out of an airplane in any of her books, and yet somehow that scene fits in just fine in this story of six people who get together to read all six of Austen’s novels. Austen did manage to cover, in six books all taking place almost entirely in the quiet British countryside of the late 18th century, many variations on the themes of love and learning, and this film shows us how her stories continue to inspire and connect people who realize that very little has changed in the last 200 plus years.
The book club starts as a way to cheer up Sylvia (Amy Brenneman), just dumped by her husband (Jimmy Smits). Sylvia’s friends, the free-spirited Bernadette (Kathy Baker) and the dog-breeding loner Jocelyn (Maria Bello), invite Sylvia’s daughter Allegra (Maggie Grace), an impetuous, extreme sport-loving lesbian. Bernadette impulsively invites Prudie (Emily Blunt), a prim high school French teacher who has never been to France. And Jocelyn even more impulsively invites a man — Hugh Dancy as Grig, a sci-fi loving techie who asks if some of the six Austen books are sequels.
Once a month, they meet to talk about the books, each of them taking turns to host and present. And the themes of the book — from the patient hoping of Mansfield Park and Persuasion to the jump-to-the-wrong conclusions of Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma, to Sense and Sensibility, which has both, each book seems to resonate to one or more of the characters and their own paths to love.
The movie is a big improvement over the wispy novel, which teetered between being cutesy and being cloying. One reason is a brilliant cast, each of whom adds tremendous heart and vibrancy to the story. It also benefits from lively direction and high spirits provided by screenwriter Robin Swicord. The opening credit sequence sets the stage with a collection of scenes showing the frustrations of modern life. And the pacing keeps things light and bubbly, making it clear that, like Austen’s heroines, a happy ending will be in store.
Parents should know that this movie includes explicit sexual references and situations, gay and straight. A character commits adultery and another considers having sex with a very inappropriate partner. The movie includes brief strong language, alcohol, and drug use.
Families who see this movie should talk about how the stories of the characters parallel the novels by Jane Austen. What are some other examples of “the humbling of the know-it-all pretty girl?” Do you agree that “high school is never over?”
Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy “In Her Shoes,” and the movies based on and inspired by Jane Austen’s novels, including “Sense and Sensibility,” “Emma,” “Pride and Prejudice,” “Bride and Prejudice,” “Clueless,” and “Bridget Jones’s Diary.”

I’ve seen four movies based on books in the past week and all made me think about the perils of adapting novels to the screen. I once heard Peter Hedges speak about the difference between plays, novels, and movies. His novel, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, was adapted into a fine movie by Lasse Hallström, and he described the experience as a master class in understanding the difference between print and film. He said that novels are about what people think and feel, plays are about what they say, and movies are about showing what the characters think and feel, most often without saying anything.
I did not think much of the book The Jane Austen Book Club. If any other author’s name was in the title, it would not have been a best-seller. The movie version is far better, genuinely enjoyable. Feast of Love and O Jerusalem did not live up to their source material. The Dark is Rising, The book that inspired “The Seeker” was so diluted in the final script that it had the same relaitonship to the source material that a homeopathic remedy has to its active ingredient. And the result was less efficacious.
It is not just about the acting. “The Jane Austen Book Club” has first class actors who bring more subtlety and complexity and life to the characters than the author ever did, but “Feast of Love” has Morgan Freeman, Jane Alexander, and Greg Kinnear, who all do the best they can but never make the relationships on screen feel immediate or alive. It just has to do with showing, not telling, and “The Jane Austen Book Club” manages that act of alchemy where the others fail.

Emile Hirsch gives a magnificent performance in one of the year’s best films, Into the Wild. I met with him in Georgetown to ask him about making the film.
What does Sean Penn as an actor bring to directing?
He has that whole wealth of experience since he’s done it on the actor’s side. So you trust him so much. Everything he asked me to do, certain things I was hesitant to do, he did first. He ate squirrel. He went first on the Colorado River. He let me know I could do it. Sean was an incredible director. He let me learn for myself, He helps you bring out the best in yourself and there’s no greater gift.
All of the movies Penn has written and directed are in some way about lost children. Why do you think that is?
He is a man of high intellect but also a very keen instinct. A lot of his choices are on an instinctual level in a very pure way. One of the things I admire about him so much is the kind of strong-willed instinct that he has and the confidence to trust that instinct and move forward. Where so many people are in the back rubbing sweaty palms, he is doing it. He wanted to do this movie because he always had a really strong wanderlust, as do I. It was infectuous, the idea that you want to go out and live your life all the way and have more meanng, live it while you have it.
You play a real-life character who died of starvation in Alaska. Did he have poor judgment? Was he self-destructive? Where would he have gone next?
He made a couple of really crucial errors, not bringing things with him like a map. But he purposefully did not bring them because he wanted to shave he margin of error. He shaved it a little too much. He had amazing wanderlust and also had a lot of personal problems.
Did he learn from the people he met or were they just way-stations on his journey to sever all ties?
He was very determined. The people on the road started to open his eyes, but it took the total solitude for him to find himself and what the meaning of his life could possibly be.
It’s quite a contrast to go from this film to your next film, “Speed Racer.” How do you prepare for such different genres?
The directors of “Speed Racer,” the Wachowski brothers, the guys who did The Matrix, have a particular sensibility about performances they expect. It was like being in a sauna for eight months and jumping into an ice bath without a break — with the lid locked!
Were there elements of the real-life story that were especially meaningful to you in portraying Chris McAndless?
The abandoned bus he lived in, which he called “the magic bus.” It was like a waystation, always symbolzing the journey, Where he learns about himself. It symbolizes the question, “Where is he going?” And I read the books he was reading, Walden by Thoreau, Emerson, Dr. Zhivago by Pasternak, Jack London’s Call of the Wild. What Chris did was very similar to what Thoreau did.

The highlight of this film is over by the time it begins. A brief credit sequence outlines the relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia in provocative, trenchant terms covering the Saudi nationality of Osama Bin Laden and most 9/11 hijackers to the entanglements between the US and its top politicians and the oil companies and the Saudis.

Then the movie opens and the last moments of complexity and signficance are over and it becomes a high-budget episode of “The A Team” crossed with “24” and a sort of “CSI: Riyadh” until a few minutes at the end try to tack on some larger meaning. It just shows how thin the material in the rest of the film is by contrast.

It is carefully constructed for maximum impact. Happy American families stationed in Saudi Arabia, mostly by oil companies, are relaxing in that most American of pastimes, a baseball game. And then an all-too-sickeningly familiar scenario unfolds, as a carefully orchestrated multi-stage terrorist attack, killing hundreds of people. Meanwhile, the man who planned it, watches from a balcony far away, filming the explosions.

Who has jurisdiction to investigate and respond? Legally, the Saudis have exclusive authority. As a matter of diplomacy, the United States does not want to interfere. But a movie-genically diverse group of FBI agents fly over to investigate, over the objections of the State Department and his Justice Department superiors.

Jamie Foxx is leader Ronald Fleury, and he is joined by canny cracker (Chris Cooper), a wisecracking newbie (Jason Bateman), and a tough but tender-hearted woman (Jennifer Garner). They are escorted by a sympathetic Saudi (Ashraf Barhom) and pestered by an obnoxious embassay aide (Jeremy Piven).

Director Peter Berg tries to show his mastery of the situation by even-handed assigment of good- and bad-guy roles on all sides and undercutting his shoot-em-up, just-in-time, climax with a final acknowledgement of the inextricability of the forces and tensions behind terrorism and corruption. His capable cast does their best to inject some character into all the bang bang. But it still comes across as arrogant, superficial and part of the problem, not part of the solution. A character is shown reading “The Koran for Dummies” as preparation for the investigation. The movie so mistrusts its audience that it tries to be “The Mideast Conflict for Dummies,” throwing a lot of gunfire and brutality on the screen to get us to learn something about Saudi Arabia and ending up losing not just credibility but interest as well.

Parents should know that this movie has very graphic violence, including a massive terrorist attack by suicide bombers that results in the death of a hundred civilians, including children, torture, and heavy artillery attacks, with explicit shots of gruesome injuries, bloody deaths, and dead bodies. Characters are in intense peril and many, many people are killed. Characters also smoke and use very strong language. A strength of the movie is the portrayal of strong, loyal, capable diverse characters.

Families who see this movie should talk about how we draw the line between diplomacy and law enforcement. How would the US respond to another country’s law enforcement officers coming to investigate a crime in the US? What do you think about the ending? What does it mean to say that tradition and modernity are in violent collision?

Families who appreciate this film will also like The Siege and Arlington Road.