Rabbit Hole

A married couple (Nicole Kidman, Aaron Eckhart) try to cope with the accidental death of their toddler son eight months ago, and with the strains it places on their marriage. David Lindsay-Abaire’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play comes to the screen (adapted by the playwright himself and directed by John Cameron Mitchell), and it’s decent enough thanks to a surface gloss and a high-pedigree cast—but practically a textbook example of what not to do. What onstage is an examination of five equal characters and their different feelings of guilt becomes a movie centered around the two stars and their problems; the equal roles of the wife’s sister (Tammy Blanchard) and mother (Dianne Wiest) are trimmed into near irrelevance, and a near-sublime play becomes something more like a two-hanky Lifetime channel weeper.