This is an actors' showcase, and Jack Lemmon, with the help of prosthetic makeup that's a touch over the top - do many middle-class 78-year-old Americans actually look about 90? - does everything anyone could to make this story of senility and belated filial concern just as gut-wrenching as possible. He's already proved himself a wow at this sort of thing and does so again here. And, although the film is virtually a two-hander between Lemmon and Ted Danson as his son, it's full of good performances and emotive moments. Alas, the story itself seems to reach an end several times, only to go off at a tangent, until it finally seems about four hours long. The makers might argue that life's a bit like that - just one darn thing after another - but it doesn't make for very fluent entertainment in a film whose highpoints all seem to occur in the middle. The best section is the part where Danson rehabilitates Lemmon after the latter's suffocating wife has had a heart attack. It's downhill from here on, but, if you cry easily at the movies, you'll cry a lot at this one.


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