Nikki Lostrom (Annette Bening) is devastated by loss of her husband Garret Mathis (Ed Harris). Summer (Jess Weixler) is their daughter. It's 5 years later. She stages open houses. Roger Stillman (Robin Williams) is her neighbor and friend. She starts stalking and then dating college professor Tom Young (Ed Harris) who looks exactly like his dead husband. She hides his resemblance from everyone. He's still friends with his ex Ann (Amy Brenneman).

Arie Posin sets up an interesting premise. I wish he had taken more chances. The movie never really raises the tension. This could be a highly emotional character study. Annette Bening is definitely a good enough actress to carry that out. This could be a case of obsession but it's not really. This could have been a lot of things but it never gets there. I kept thinking she could just tell him the truth. The movie could have moved to an even more compelling emotional landscape after Nikki comes clean with Tom. The movie feels stretched out as we wait for the inevitable reveal.

Beautiful, grieving middle-aged widow, whose loving, devoted husband recently drowned, recalls blissful times together while gazing out over the ocean in her backyard...jump ahead five whole years, and she's still thinking about him. She tells her grown daughter that she doesn't like "looking back", and then immediately visits the museum where she and her husband spent a great deal of time hugging in front of the art. Screenwriters Arie Posin, who also directed, and Matthew McDuffie give our heroine (played with her usual pluck and vulnerability by Annette Bening) a plush job decorating houses for sale, a gorgeous home by the Pacific (designed by her late husband and filled with his art purchases),a healthy daughter to touch bases with, not to mention genteel, lovestruck widower Robin Williams as her neighbor! By the time Bening meets and begins dating a divorced art teacher who is a lookalike for her deceased husband (both played by Ed Harris),it all seems like too much. Because warm yet tentative Bening plays the central character, we are, presumably, supposed to feel for her widow automatically; however, not even this talented actress can breathe life into such stale scenes as a first kiss in a restaurant that causes her to panic and rush off to the ladies room. This is Harlequin Romance stuff, and what these wonderful actors saw in the tepid screenplay, loaded with uneasy conversations and clumsy exposition, is simply not clear. The sequence where the woman talks to her husband's double for the first time (in his classroom) and starts crying uncontrollably is an intriguing starting point for dramatic material, but McDuffie and Posin are too schematic. Their picture is a mechanical, infuriating valentine. *1/2 from ****

I just came across this this lazy Sunday afternoon here in sunny old Blighty! From the description, and the actors in it, it seemed to be a movie worth watching.

To be honest, I didn't concentrate on it 100% because I was doing some stuff on my laptop at the same time but I saw most of it. The concept was very interesting and I felt the casting was very good BUT it's definitely a flawed movie. The whole concept of this widowed woman having lost her soulmate husband 5 years previously and then spotting a man who seems to look identical to her late husband, and then embarking on a relationship with him in which, of course, she doesn't reveal to him that the reason she finds him so entrancing is because he's a dead ringer for her late husband, is pretty preposterous! For one thing, if a grieving spouse, or partner, years later met someone who looked identical to their dearly departed soulmate wouldn't they at least want to find out whether that person was a twin and, if so, wouldn't they then want to know why they were never told about the twin by their deceased partner?? So, I was puzzled as to whether Tom was someone who actually really did look identical to her late husband OR whether she was so unstable from trying to come to terms with her late husband's death that she imagined that he was either identical to her husband or perhaps some sort of reincarnation of him, even though he may not have resembled him (if you get what I mean!). Then, of course, there was the scene where the daughter turns up unexpectedly at her mum's house and sees Tom for the first time and freaks out, so that meant that yes, in fact Tom did actually look like the spitting image of her late father.

I found Robin Williams's character, Roger, to be very moving and sad. He wanted more than friendship but she, of course, wasn't interested in that and just wanted to be friends. I'm not sure whether I found this so sad because that can be a sad situation in real life, or whether it was because I found Robin himself so good in that role and also because it was one of his last roles, so that was making me sad too.

Ultimately, as others have noted, the ending was VERY rushed and passed in the blink of an eye, almost literally! I looked down at my keyboard briefly and when I looked up all of a sudden she was in the art gallery being told by a woman that Tom had died and then she was told that yes, he'd done all of the paintings in the last year or so (presumably since the relationship ended) and then she was shown to the painting he had done of her. Then the next thing you know she's swimming in her pool, towards the camera and then she surfaces and is beaming elatedly, looking as if a huge weight has been lifted off her shoulders and she's regained her youthfulness again. Strange ! ! You would think she would have been very saddened by Tom's death not so elated and blissful looking - very, very odd! So, god only knows why she would have been so happy at the end. If that had been me I would have felt awful about having misled Tom about the reason for being with him and I would have felt horrible that he had died ill and alone. Perhaps the fact that Tom had been so creative in the run-up to his death, and had painted that picture of her, had fed into her ego and made her feel worthy and super special !!

Anyway, at least this movie was thought provoking and not as horribly predictable and run-of-the-mill as most of the movies that Hollywood churns out. Also the casting was very good. Oh, and I see that one reviewer commented that Ed Harris was not leading man material and they rabbited on about his bald spot and the pattern of it . . . how weird ! ! I'm assuming that person was a man who has no idea why Ed Harris is so salivated over by so many women. No, he's not 'perfect' looking (whatever that is),he's a mature guy and he may be short in stature, but he is very sexy anyway. Clearly, some people think sexiness is all about looks - any intelligent person knows that's not the case at all! Ed Harris is YUMMY, short height, ageing skin, bald spot and all ! !