Imagine Stanley Donen’s “Blame It on Rio” — that ’80s comedy where Michael Caine slept with his best friend’s teen daughter — taking place instead in New Jersey during the Thanksgiving-Christmas holiday period.
Toss in a dash of “American Beauty” without the full moral consequences, and you’ve more or less got Julian Farino’s “The Oranges,” a Sundance-style quirkfest about a pair of dysfunctional families thrown into comic crisis.
Hugh Laurie, in his first big-screen lead since his brilliant run on TV’s “House,’’ is less-than-ideally cast as the mild-mannered, bored dad. He gets seduced by Leighton Meester when the 24-year-old offspring of neighbors Oliver Platt and Allison Janney returns after a lengthy self-exile from the Garden State.
Laurie’s control-freak wife, Catherine Keener, flips and moves out, while Meester moves in with Laurie. Everyone is outraged, including Laurie’s children, played by Alia Shawkat (who’s superb) and Adam Brody, as well as the cheating ex-fiancé (Sam Rosen) whose breakup sent the rebounding Meester to Laurie.
While there are laughs, the farcical elements of “The Oranges’’ are not presented with sufficient discipline to live up to the full potential of its cast. But as a seven-year veteran of the New Jersey suburban experience, I can testify that it nails the milieu’s specifics. Shawkat’s character works for the ghastly Huffman Koos furniture chain, and I especially loved it when Keener mowed down her husband’s massive and ugly Christmas lawn ornaments.