Gabriella D'Arc (Jennifer Connelly) left the semester for her sick granny and hasn't returned. Michael (Patrick Dempsey) is overjoyed to be invited to meet her family in Quebec City for her birthday over Christmas. Her eccentric atheist father writes in the nude. There are her sisters Simone and Irenka. Irenka's boyfriend is handyman Nick. They're joined by Father Walter, Gabby's religious mother's former love. Michael is discombobulated after quickly insulting Gabby's mom by expressing sympathy and Gabby telling him that, "I'm not in love with you anymore." It's a week of strange family drama. Granny is delusional and thinks that he is her husband Michael.

This is a cold movie and I don't mean the snowy Quebec City. Jennifer Connelly is an enchanting mercurial presence. I don't like her character in this movie. Patrick Dempsey is a pathetic puppy chasing after her. While I don't like his character either, I certainly understand him. Damn, the girl is hot, but most of this movie leaves me cold. It's definitely not actually funny. It's the unknowable nature of women and it leaves me unsatisfied.

Okay, perhaps the writers of this story of a fictionalized version of a real family who lived in Montreal meant well, but the bizarre set of sisters, mother, father, grandmother and selected friends will not be for everyone's taste. Patrick Dempsey is a high school student in love with the somewhat fickle Jennifer Connelly, dumped by her yet invited to her big estate, and later meeting with her aging grandmother played by the Academy award and Tony winning Lila Kedrova ("Zorba the Greek" and the Broadway revival, "Zorba"),sharing a bond with her because of his resemblance to her late husband. She keeps disappearing and showing up in the oddest of places. The relationship with her sisters and parents is strange and maker me wonder if they were all nuts.

I can understand this having somewhat of a cult following, but that won't be everyone's feeling about the film. Well meaning and often ambitious but that makes the film seem pretentious and even eye rolling at times. The family is often cold to Dempsey, and he's complete putty in their hands. The mother is rather cold, the father an eccentric nudist, the two other sisters rather undefined and granny sweet but lost somewhere else rather than on planet earth. I barely even felt a plot, just a bunch of bizarre vignettes and nothing to even warrant telling this story. A funny moment has a catholic priest shutting the door on Dempsey after finding out that he's not even catholic. So as cute as the film strives to be, it only succeeds in being too offbeat to truly enjoy.

My first reaction from this movie was accurate : the teen was indeed a much younger Dempsey who shows that he could be fun. Next, it was cool to discover that the movies happens in Quebec because it's an exotic change of place. After those twenty first minutes, my pleasure just get gone as the movie becomes a real pain : it uses the already seen cliché of the eccentric family and this one is really boring. As Dempsey says it himself, he is the lone intruder in their family territory and it's an situation that I depicts to have live personally this nightmare. As the characters rarely get out of this mansion, the feeling you got is just to be bottled up ! For those expecting that young Jenny would be there to bring warmness and sweetness, the story unbelievably prefers Dempsey to fall in love with the grandmother ! At the end, this movie is a total disappointment and belongs to the stinkers of Jenny's career !