Ryan Grantham and Eric McCormack in Considering Love and Other Magic.
With Considering Love & Other Magic, the Calgary writer-director Dave Schultz considers grief, fantasy and friendship – but did he consider tone?
Intended for teen audiences, a wobbly but charismatic story about getting over life's losses is incompatibly melodramatic and whimsical, carried by a score that is impish one moment and serious the next. This is Donnie Darko caught in a playful game of Clue.
Mind you, it's an imaginative and handsome-looking film, starring Maddie Phillips as a troubled young protagonist (Jesse) who can't get over the suicide of her younger brother. While her mother still dotes on the boy (washing his clothes and fixing his favourite supper), her father struggles to push his family past the awful event. A psychiatrist isn't really helping Jesse, but she's distracted from her anxiety when she begins tutoring a curious (possibly fictitious) boy frozen in the Eisenhower era.
Although the acting is solid all around, the elusive film is probably too mischievous for its own good.