Boundaries

Just when you start to feel like a churl for condemning every touchy-feely indie dramedy as a creatively bankrupt, Sundance-sloppy ode to mopey narcissism, here comes this dysfunction junction from writer-director Shana Feste (Endless Love). Vera Farmiga stars as Laura Jaconi, a single mother with the standard-issue misfit son (Lewis MacDougall as Henry), weird job (she’s the put-upon personal assistant of an old friend) and quirky character defect (her apartment houses a veritable zoo of strays). The easily manipulated Laura also tries to set boundaries with her naughty-boy drug dealer father Jack (Christopher Plummer), but soon enough she is driving Jack and Henry on the prerequisite road trip towards a prefabricated emotional breakthrough. Whatever the film’s admirable ambitions in terms of examining dysfunctional family dynamics and celebrating lives lived outside the norm, Boundaries is almost uniformly lowbrow, with a weak script that severely tests the likeability of Farmiga and Plummer.