Introducing the Dwights (review)

It’s a familiar movie trope: the Mother From Hell. But Brenda Blethyn (Pride & Prejudice) -- a planetary treasure -- makes her an unmissable combination of love and angst and fear and warmth. Her former famous standup comic, ever trying to make a comeback, is a Brit expat long in Australia; her star declined after the birth of her sons... and now one, a sweet 20ish virgin (Khan Chittenden) is endangering her still-comfortable little world by falling in love with a nice girl who threatens to take him away. Formerly known as Clubland when it debuted at Sundance earlier this year, this is the best kind of family dramedy, skewering the contentious relationship between parent and adult child but never failing to celebrate life’s major passages as anything less than trials to be gotten through, and then cherished.

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