This romantic dramedy tries to cram enough plot twists for a season’s worth of TV episodes into an hour and a half, but is still worthwhile for its fine performances, including the best work that Greg Kinnear and Jennifer Connelly have done in quite a while.
Kinnear’s famous novelist — who lives in a fabulous beach cottage in North Carolina and enjoys quickies with a sexy, married neighbor (Kristen Bell) — is still so obsessed with ex-wife Connelly that he spies on her and her new husband.
Their daughter (Lily Collins) — a precocious writer who’s penned an autobiographical novel — has never forgiven Mom, though, and prefers one-night stands to the romantic overtures of a college classmate (Logan Lerman) with a dying mother.
Kinnear and Connelly’s son (Nat Wolff) is a gentle aspiring fantasy writer who loses his virginity to a high school classmate who turns out to have major substance-abuse issues.
“Stuck in Love’’ may strain to patly resolve all of this, but debuting writer-director Josh Boone certainly handles his cast (including the Governator’s son Patrick Schwarzenegger) with aplomb. And it’s hard not to like any movie that casts Stephen King as a telephone deus ex machina.