I should have known this was based on a novel. It plays out like one. Adult drama about a Chicago lawyer whose wife abruptly leaves him. He has a young son to care for, and for reasons I missed, he then moves to Kansas (it may have to do with what I presume is a sister living there). He picks up a job as a high school basketball coach. One of his players has a sister with whom the now-single dad begins a relationship. Guess who comes roaring back into his life at this juncture. Then, on top of everything else, he gets a call from an old classmate who is a lawyer in Dallas and who offers him a job. Now things get really complicated, especially when he realizes he cannot take his son with him. Vince Vaughn is the dad and Lauren Adams is the new love interest. The wife is played by Monica Potter, an actress who sounds like Julia Roberts but who never has had much of a career. Vaughn and Adams are fine in this chick flick, Potter not so fine. She simply lacks the acting chops to pull off the role of a troubled, wayward woman. If Elizabeth Banks had been old enough to play the role, she would have done it justice. The movie is for women and sensitive men only. Manly men, beware.
Review of A Cool, Dry Place
