The Daytrippers

With his Big Night acknowledged as an independent gem and a bigger night yet to come when he gets a shot at the Best Screenplay Oscar, Stanley Tucci can be excused for snoozing through the formulaic turns of Greg Mottola's drably coy debut feature The Daytrippers. Indeed, he's scarcely in it; as Louis, a seemingly model husband suspected of errancy when wife Eliza (Hope Davis) discovers an apparent love letter in his office, he wisely disappears for most of the movie.

Mustering the support of her crass Long Island family (Anne Meara as her grotesquely domineering mother, Pat McNamara as her feckless father, Parker Posey as her hip sister, and Liev Schreiber as her sister's wanna-be novelist boyfriend), Eliza gathers everybody into the station wagon and heads into Manhattan to find out what's what. On the way to that sour revelation they get into some scrapes meant to be quirky and poignant; in fact, The Daytrippers is a negligible detour in its distinguished cast's careers. Opens Friday at the Avon.

-- Peter Keough