Well directed, well written and well acted. There's a humor in the story that isn't common. This film is a sleeper. One person will watch it and dismiss it as just another romantic comedy, and another will see it for what it actually is: multiple talents working together to create an excellent movie. Loved it.

Billy Crudup plays a misanthropic self-hater full of obsessive quirks that make no sense and that turn him into an extraordinarily unlikeable schmuck. Therefore, the film makes no sense in its attempt to redeem him with Mandy Moore playing his baby-talking foil. His relationship with his late father appears to be his central reason d'etre, but that makes no sense either. The plot makes out another guy to be worse than Billy because he wrote two dedications to his pending book, one for Mandy Moore and one for another girlfriend, depending on which one takes him back. Got it? In the end, this film is annoying, but it is certainly not the lightweight romantic comedy you figure it is from the packaging. Watch it if you like Mandy Moore.

i ordered this movie weeks ago and it still hasn't arrived. i sent an email to the seller and still have not heard back. very dissatsfied.

I saw this movie in the theaters and had to buy the dvd. First of all, I love Mandy Moore and would buy anything with her in it. It's a romantic love story about a man with serious issues and he falls for Mandy. Very good.

Two men view porn films to gather ideas for children's books. Since this was the most original idea in the movie, I recommend that these DVDs be immediately promoted to coffee cup coasters. The main male character is a victim of child abuse who never faced it, instead developing various obsessive compulsive behaviors in order to make him so busy with minutiae (like arranging napkin and sugar dispensers at the restaurant) that he is too busy to heal. He spends who knows how much time searching for a special rock that he gave to the female lead and then threw away, eventually finding it among the myriad stones of the beach. While some symbolism may be intended, is giving her the rock supposed to be his cathartic experience and now everybody lives happily ever after? The female lead, whose posture indicates more a need for therapy and Pilates than a relationship, gets to choose between a man who cheated on her and one whose emotional scars leave him emotionally unavailable unless she enjoys navigating the pits and falls of his damaged emotional landscape. A dreary miasma of moral relativism, substitution of co-dependency, and celebration of victim-hood as a replacement for self-actualization and love.