After drifting apart over the years, two single siblings—Jon and Wendy, the younger of the two—band together to care for their estranged, elderly father, Lenny, who is rapidly slipping into dementia.

Their dysfunctional family life appears to have left Wendy and Jon emotionally crippled and unable to sustain relationships.

Wendy is sleeping with an unattainable married man thirteen years her senior and Jon cannot commit to a Polish woman who must return to Kraków after her visa expires.

The site's consensus states: "Thanks to a tender, funny script from director Tamara Jenkins, and fine performances from Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney, this film delivers a nuanced, beautifully three-dimensional look at the struggles and comforts of family bonds.

[7] Time magazine's Richard Schickel named the film #7 of his Top 10 Movies of 2007, and praises both the cast and writer-director: These actors are unimprovable as, somehow, they find a certain decency under the pressure of their grinding familial chore, a reason to hope that slightly better days may be ahead for them once their duty has been done.

Writer-director Tamara Jenkins is less interested in heroically inspiring us than she is in showing us the values to be found in the more modest forms of dutifulness.