Casey Affleck, younger brother to Ben, shuffles. He's handsome in a low-key kind of way, portraying a quintessential, dime-a-dozen slacker in Steve Buscemi's third feature film Lonesome Jim. Jim hangs pictures of suicidal writers on his bedroom wall. He mopes. He steals money from his overly cheerful mother (Mary Kay Place) and has no guilt making her walk to the grocery when he borrows her car to go to a bar. The novelistic screenplay by James C. Strauss sets up a traditional story about an intelligent, underachieving young man who needs to get over himself and grow up a little. Come of age.
Which is precisely what happens in this amiable and affecting independent film. A failure in New York City, Jim returns to his small town Indiana home to retreat from the world. Unfortunately, he finds only more problems in the midst of his family: real problems, the kind that can't be ignored. His older brother Tim (the wonderful Kevin Corrigan, who has had a warm place in my heart since being mistreated by Catherine Keener in Nicole Holofcener's Walking and Talking) has better reasons to be suicidal. When Jim kindly points this out, Tim drives his car directly into a tree. Suddenly Jim is required to act. Responsibilities include coaching Tim's daughter's hapless basketball team and going to work at his parents' step-ladder factory. Yes, a stepladder factory.
Buscemi paints an honest picture of working class suburbia, where living rooms are covered with shag carpets and Applebees is the best restaurant in town. Liv Tyler gives a lovely turn as a single mother and local nurse who does her best to become Jim's girlfriend. Before the days of elfin ears, Tyler made her start in indie films like Heavy and Stealing Beauty, and it's a pleasure to see her turn down the volume. Quite simply, seemingly without effort, she glows--in a heavy parka or a pale green nurses uniform. Many of Tyler's scenes, however, are stolen by Ben Rovello, the wonderful child actor who plays her son.
