Trama

The Taylor family is devastated by an accident that takes place on the day their matriarch is due to graduate from college -- decades after leaving to raise her children.

A family with an abusive father, a sensitive son, and a mother out of her depth: we see them when Michael is about 12 and when he's in his 30's, a writer of romance novels, going home for his mother and sister's college graduations. We go back and forth between the two periods: when Michael is a boy, the pressure builds to the point when the thin thread keeping them as a family threatens to break, and there's a fight. During Michael's trip home, there's an unexpected death which prolongs his stay and brings to the light his relationship with his father, his aunt, and her young children. Michael's estranged wife joins them for the funeral.—<jhailey@hotmail.com>

Michael Taylor is a New York based author of romance novels. The bend toward what is generally regarded as a female genre may be due to the strong relationship he has with his mother, Lisa Taylor, and in large part a measure of survival against his tyrannical father, English professor Charles Taylor. The problems he has with his father stem from as far back as childhood, when he would do things purposefully to set his father off, knowing that some sort of retribution would be coming. Michael also has a strong relationship with his only slightly older aunt, Lisa's sister Jane, who lived with them one summer, the year Michael's sister Ryne was born. Michael and Jane's bond was also a joint front, similarly subversive, against Charles. Michael has divorced his wife Kelly, something he has told no one in the family except Jane. Michael's trip home to celebrate Lisa and Ryne's graduation from college changes due to unexpected circumstances which add an extra dimension to Michael's confusion about his feelings toward his family. Michael's latest book, an exposé of the family masquerading as fiction and meant as a means to cleanse himself from his past, is currently sitting with the publisher, although he has given Jane an advance copy of the manuscript. His mother, the glue that held the family together, kept many of the issues of the family solely to herself. However, Michael stumbles across some materials among his mother's belongings that may provide a road to reconciliation, and not only with Charles.—Huggo

This movie is a semi-autobiographical movie. Upon arriving for his mother's graduation, Michael finds out that his mother has actually died in a car crash. The movie deals with the family coming together dealing with the loss of their mother. They also find out some things that were more than they expected. There are many moments of flashbacks of his younger years. He deals with the disapproving father and the way that he felt as a child. There are many moments when you see that his father was not a kind man and was very cruel. He never spared his son's feelings and definitely seemed to not have any compassion towards his wife. Micheal and his aunt Jane, who is also his best friend, deal with growing up in a house with a mean father, Charlie, and a very loving mother, Lisa (Julia Roberts). Together they work on getting over the past and starting a better future..