Love Hurts

Paul Weaver (Daniels) gets his divorce papers on the eve of his sister's wedding, and rather than seek oblivion in another one-night stand, he decides to attend the ceremony. Guess who else is there? But Weaver's attempts at impressing his wife (Sikes) and two children are distracted by the presence of scatty Susan (Ivey), who has marriage problems of her own. By and large, Ron Nyswaner's script (written nearly a decade earlier) refuses the easy sympathies which affect too many such films; as Weaver confronts an unforgiving wife and daughter, his situation becomes progressively irredeemable. When it works, this relatively unpredictable approach is very effective - as when Weaver and his wife make a desperate attempt at reconciliation - but other sequences are too indulgent and unfocused.