It's 1983 Los Angeles. Mamie Toll is 17 and her mother marries a rich restaurant chain English guy. She has sex with her new stepbrother Charley Peppitone and later supposedly gets an abortion. Nineteen years later, Mamie (Lisa Kudrow) is a divorced abortion counselor dating masseuse Javier (Bobby Cannavale). Charley (Steve Coogan) runs the only restaurant left over from his father and he's gay now with Gil (David Sutcliffe). Gil's lesbian high school friend Pam (Laura Dern) and her partner Diane (Sarah Clarke) have a son Max and Charley starts to suspect the paternity. Restaurant worker Otis (Jason Ritter) is a closeted gay from his father Frank (Tom Arnold) and dealing with his band singer Jude (Maggie Gyllenhaal). Manipulative filmmaker Nicky (Jesse Bradford) tries to blackmail Mamie for $25k to give the present name of her son who she didn't actually abort.
The characters are all interconnected in modern familial ways. There are probably too many characters and stories. The stories meander in sometimes usual ways. I like some of the acting. Tom Arnold surprises me by doing real acting. I don't particularly like the closing texts for each character. It becomes more or less like a laundry list of their futures. That only accentuates the problem with this movie. Every character has to have a plot and I am suppose to care about them.
The characters are all interconnected in modern familial ways. There are probably too many characters and stories. The stories meander in sometimes usual ways. I like some of the acting. Tom Arnold surprises me by doing real acting. I don't particularly like the closing texts for each character. It becomes more or less like a laundry list of their futures. That only accentuates the problem with this movie. Every character has to have a plot and I am suppose to care about them.