Audiences will probably see Brad Silberling's Moonlight Mile as similar to last year's In the Bedroom, mostly because of the subject matter (the unexpected passing of a young family member) and the setting (a small New England town), but possibly also because of actress Ellen Pompeo, whose sandy-blonde windswept hair and crinkly smile invoke a younger Sissy Spacek. Moonlight and Bedroom couldn't be more different, though: While the earlier film focused almost inescapably on the searing pain and gaping void left by the loss of a loved one, this movie has an unabashedly dry sense of humor about the disconnectedness of death -- one that, in keeping with its light spirit, is sure to win viewers over.

      No one feels this more than Joe Nast (Jake Gyllenhaal), a young man whose fiancée was shot and killed in a local coffee shop. Joe now feels it's his duty to live with her parents, Ben (Dustin Hoffman) and JoJo (Susan Sarandon), both as a bereaved husband-to-be and as a caring son-in-law. His conflicted nature is understandable, given that the film is set in the early 1970's: Nixon is in the White House, Vietnam is on the country's mind, and questions of loyalty seem more important than anything else. But Joe harbors a terrible secret, and one that becomes increasingly difficult to keep after he meets and falls in love with Bertie Knox (Pompeo).

      Thematically, this should be heavy stuff. Fortunately, Moonlight Mile nimbly traverses the potholes of its chosen genre, which often include weepy scenes of prolonged sentimentality -- the kind that make a convincing argument for the increased availability of Kleenex at movie theaters' concession stands to aid the more emotional audience members. Mile is not this kind of tearjerker. Writer-director Silberling infuses the goings-on with his ever-present humor, effective because the story has an admittedly personal influence: Readers may remember that Silberling's then-girlfriend Rebecca Schaeffer was shot dead by a deranged fan in Hollywood in 1989.

      The cast, too, is honest, if a bit familiar. Jake Gyllenhaal, who earned critics' esteem by avoiding the teen movie circuit, has backed himself into a corner by repeatedly playing the shy, emotionally uncertain youth (see also: The Good Girl and October Sky). Luckily he has Ellen Pompeo to play against. They have chemistry, as is often said, but more importantly, they fulfill Silberling's desire for juxtaposition.

      Joe, for instance, has "suffered" the death of a girl he no longer loved, and yet he has the pallor of a ghost. Bertie, on the other hand, longs for a beau who has been M.I.A. in Vietnam for over three years; despite this she has exuberance to spare.

      Likewise for Ben and JoJo, who are a study in contrasts. Hoffman plays Ben as an accommodating, neurotic character -- not exactly a challenge for the actor, but it sets his character up in direct opposition to JoJo. Sarandon delivers her as a brutally and comically honest version of her patented saintly matriarchs.

      But these characters blend well with Silberling's vision, and he shows remarkable restraint with a cast so talented. Sarandon was, in fact, involved in a movie like this gone wrong -- 1998's Stepmom, directed by Chris Columbus, whose notorious over-handling of films got the better of that one. Silberling, though, knows to keep his hands off, and to trust his actors, and that his themes and ideas will probably come through anyway.

      And they do, as in the very first scene, when a funeral procession rolls through town, past a baseball game, a church, a coffee shop, a young couple making out -- all images that Silberling deliberately plants to remind the audience of the unpredictability of life and death. The director is not obnoxiously moribid, though, because in the end, life wins out.

      This is because Silberling's Moonlight Mile is the kind of movie that has a love of montage and Van Morrison (or, as the title indicates, the Rolling Stones). It is the kind of movie where the hero and his girl ride off into the sunset, having put their troubles behind them, both literally and figuratively. Essentially, it is the kind of movie that some viewers, the real cast-iron cynics, will find offensively heart wrenching. But more than likely, most will find it positively life affirming.

Craig Roush, 2002