The main character is a guy named Carter, a writer of soft porn who lives in California. He is a good listener, so people reveal things about themselves to him. Because he knows that "life is messy", he is not judgmental. He goes to Michigan to live with his grandmother for a while.

His grandmother is a quirky/confused woman who may be senile and who has an obsession with the possibility of her own impending death.

Across the street lives a family named the Hardwickes. Carter is drawn into the drama of their lives. The mother, Sarah, is not happy in her marriage. Her relationship with her teenage daughter suffers from the usual poor communication/generational issues.

The teenage daughter, Lucy, besides dealing with her family issues, is not very self-defined, like many teenagers. She sees a guy who may be her boyfriend.

The younger daughter, Paige, is the precocious tween who hides her immaturity with her verbosity and intelligence.

Carter negotiates the minefield of the Hardwickes' individual issues and their feelings for each other. In the process, he learns about himself. The story contains some tears, but the overall tone of the film is light.

In the Land of Women reminds us of some basic truths: You are lucky to live, so live your life (and no one else's). You are lucky to love another. Art awakens you to real living.

Jonathan Kasdan--the writer and director--is the son of Lawrence Kasdan. This film is not a copy of his father's style, but it did remind me of the superior Lawrence Kasdan film, Grand Canyon. I think father would be proud.

This new film starring Adam Brody of TV's "The OC" might win some kind of prize for sweet wishy-washiness were it not for the feisty grandma played by Olympia Dukakis -- an attempt to achieve "edge" that will, however, be instantly blown away if you watch a couple minutes of the late, great Nancy Marchand playing Tony Soprano's deadly mom. A well-meaning effort with scenes punctuated by lite rock, In the Land of Women is essentially about Adam Brody, a rangy young man of undeniable charm who resembles the young Tom Hanks -- except that he's cuter -- and has a lot less to do here than Hanks did in his early films. Meg Ryan is "taking her first cautious baby steps in a maternal, older-woman mode and maintaining her footing," Stephen Holden of the NYTimes says. But Ryan maintains her "footing" by simply acting the same starry-eyed blonde she's always been, albeit with a serious challenge to face (breast cancer--but all is well by film's end). Ryan looks like Brody's older sister, not a Mrs. Robinson, and the comparisons to The Graduate seem hard to credit. A few walks and a kiss do not a sexual coming of age make, but anyway Carter Webb (Brody's über-WASP name in the film), being 26 in 2007, doesn't need an intro to sex. He's had that earlier, doubtless long before the relationship with Latina movie starlet Sophia (Elena Anaya) whose termination is the plot's ho-hum beginning.

Being a LA movie brat like his brother Jake, Jon Kasdan makes Carter a marginal film writer (of soft-core porn) born and raised in LA. When Sophia dumps him he goes to Michigan to watch over his putatively senile grandmother (or is she just preternaturally blunt? the screenplay isn't quite sure), escape from the source of his love pain, and maybe write the novel about his high school life that he's been futzing around with for over a decade. Who should be grandma's neighbor but Meg, here called Sarah Hardwicke, with a sexy blonde daughter, an adulterous husband, and a potentially tragic illness, just discovered? (Cancer: can a story like this go anywhere unsentimental with that?)

From his weepy intro when he gets the gate from Sophia in a diner, Carter is nothing but a teddy bear, so it's appropriate that the novel he finally completes has "teddy bear" in the title.

The "land of women" in question consists of Ryan and her character's two daughters, an inarticulate, put-upon teenager (Lucy: Kristen Stewart) and a prematurely wise younger sister (Paige: Makenzie Vega). And of course grandma Dukakis, whose words of unexpected wisdom are overshadowed by her repeated assertions that she is about to die. Dukakis' Phyllis is a shtick that never quite comes off. Is this really Michigan? All we know is the neighborhood is upper-bourgeois and that Meg's front yard contains masses of flowers in full bloom it would take a team of half a dozen full time gardeners to maintain. It could just as well be New Jersey.

John Hughes and The Breakfast Club are mentioned -- a fatal mistake. Everything in this bland, well-meaning effort crumbles when compared to the livelier (and incidentally smarter) youth pictures of the Eighties, just as the fumbling plot line and clumsy hero pale in the light of Mike Nichol's seminal, razor-sharp Graduate. Perhaps Carter needs a posse of equally stymied contemporaries like the young men in Muccino's The Last Kiss to make this interesting. A Land of Fumbling Young Men might at least have room for more jokes. The film's only moments come in the interactions between Brody and Ryan, but they're only moments of possibility, not achievement. Why does Carter Webb run into a tree while jogging? Why does he get knocked down by Lucy's footballer boyfriend? Only to give him something to do. But he isn't going anywhere -- except back to Hollywood. This is not a terrible movie; it's just a feeble one.

"It's a big world out there; it's messy, chaotic and it's never what you'd expect", Carter (Adam Brody) tells Lucy (Kristen Stewart) in a crucial moment of "In the land of women". Writer/director Jon Kasdan's first film is a fresh take on what I like to call 'turning points', and it can be described with the phrase quoted above, except for the chaotic part.

It would be fair to reassure the unexpected part, because the film was definitely (and is, if you care watching the trailer) incorrectly publicized, making the viewer believe something that's clearly not there. There's a big chance that teenager fans of Adam Brody (Seth Cohen, from the series "The O.C.") end up disappointed by the movie, which contains a little girl that's precocious in her way of seeing life, a girl who doesn't know what she wants and a mother who's dealing with a big issue.

When Carter comes into the life of these women, he's also going through a difficult personal moment; he's just broken up with his girlfriend and has to get over her. A writer of soft porn movie screenplays (how's that for original?), Carter decides to visit his grandmother (a hilarious Olympia Dukakis) and, while he takes care of her, probably figure out what to do with his life and maybe write what he always wanted to and never could. And there he meets Lucy and her mother Sarah (Meg Ryan in top form), and every 'turning point' gets mixed up.

What goes on between Carter and the 'women' of the title may adjust to the "messy" part of the beginning: a sort of triangle will start taking shape, but gladly this is not your everyday triangle of love and discussions. It's a triangle of mutual enrichment, where every character learns at least something from the other.

Probably if you fully analyze the situations they're going through, only one of them is logically preoccupying, but the fact is that none of these characters in a position where giving up is an option. Kasdan tries, with a human and perceptive script, to present solutions and hope to these situations. With a peaceful camera, he puts quiet conversations above everything else and that's the key of his recommendable movie's success. That doesn't mean that the rest doesn't help though.

There's something about "In the land of women" that's questionable but also gratifying and is that these 'turning points', while not so defining and irremediable, are presented as the ultimate moments of life; as the most important decisions these characters need to take. The moving score by Stephen Trask; Adam Brody's charismatic portrayal, still attached to the 'Cohen Factor'; and the perfect performance by Kristen Stewart, with all the expressions and insecurities of an adolescent, make some scenes and conversations more crucial than they may actually be.

You pay attention to those conversations, and to a couple of movie references, and to those moments when we're expecting a character to say something. Here, Kasdan evades all the common places and the clichés and those phrases we're always waiting to hear. That always has to be something good.