The film She's So Lovely plays like the work of a writer trying to make the best of just such a bad situation. The script was written by legendary independent filmmaker John Cassavetes, who made his reputation on histrionic, improvisatory dramas about tough guys and their crazy women. After John's death, his son Nick got a call from actor Sean Penn, who encouraged the younger Cassavetes to revive the project. Penn also roped in some top actors--including himself, his wife Robin Wright Penn, Harry Dean Stanton, James Gandolfini, and John Travolta.

At first glance, it's easy to see the attraction of the material. Robin Wright Penn has a juicy role as a strung-out, pregnant loser named Maureen, in love with her manic, grifter husband Eddie (Sean Penn). When Eddie disappears for three days, Maureen has a drunken, violent sexual encounter with their neighbor across the hall (Gandolfini). Afraid that Eddie will do something rash if he finds out, she tries to lie her way around the trouble; but Eddie quickly gets wise, and he goes on a rampage that lands him in an institution for 10 years.

Flash-forward a decade. Maureen has divorced Eddie and married a successful construction-business owner named Joey (Travolta), with the understanding that she's just biding time until Eddie is released. The centerpiece of the film is a dinner party at the nice, suburban home of Maureen, Joey, and their three daughters. Expecting Maureen to leave with him, Eddie shows up with his old drinking buddy Shorty (Stanton). But as it turns out, she has changed in his absence, and the pull of her children may be too strong even for a love like Eddie's.

My gut feeling is that John Cassavetes started with the idea of the dinner party, and seeing nowhere to go with this basically irresolvable conflict, he worked his way backward to develop the story of Mo and Eddie. The first hour of the film covers two breathless days in their down-and-out lives, and it's filled with romance, pathos, and heartbreaking tragedy. When the film skips ahead to the dinner party, the sudden shift in tone to zany comedy is jarring; though the finale is often very funny, the film as a whole loses its impact and becomes irrelevant. Matters aren't helped by the story's conclusion, which seems to be there only because the movie needs some kind of ending.

Despite the inconsistencies in the script, She's So Lovely is worth seeing, thanks to the assured direction by Cassavetes and the stellar ensemble acting. With the recent deaths of Jimmy Stewart and Robert Mitchum, I've been watching a lot of their old films and thinking about what makes a great movie actor--namely, that they can hold your attention even in a piece of studio fluff. She's So Lovely isn't quite fluff, but it certainly isn't a work of any great importance either. Ultimately, it's a clinic on screen acting led by a handful of masters. Robin Wright Penn's transformation from a hopped-up, screechy barfly to a hollow, soulsick suburban mother is breathtaking; Travolta's jittery, threatened family man elicits both sympathy and big laughs.

At the center Robin Wright Penn and Sean Penn, giving us a reason to watch She's So Lovely

But the movie belongs to Sean Penn, who blows through the first part of the movie like a strong wind, knocking down scenery and mussing his costars' hair. The farcical construct of the film's ending is too confining for Penn and his character, but the actor knows what's coming, and he knows that any tension in the denouement has to come from the audience's memory of Mo and Eddie in their glory days.