Parents' Guide to Same Day with Someone

This is a weak comedy, a series of labored, disjointed gags. But suddenly, the movie goes dark in the last thirty minutes. Mesa is a self-absorbed daughter of a fabulously wealthy family. Their fortunes, it seems, are tied to good relations with another country whose prized stone has been loaned to the museum. That information must be strung together by a largely confused audience as the day repeats and the incompetent storytelling snowballs. The tone shifts abruptly and inexplicably into drama about domestic violence toward the end. We are supposed to believe that Mesa's concerns turn outward toward others struggling with far worse problems than hers. Mesa has concluded that "whenever it rains, it pours," and that events aren't predetermined, even though she's lived through countless days in which she's been unable to change anything.

As the tone shifts in the end, we are in a different movie, starring a Mesa unconvincingly transformed into a caring, less self-absorbed person. The presumed moral of the story is actually offensive. It seems the gods are shallow enough to improve the life of a spoiled, rich person even though she already has just about everything most people could want.