Full Grown Men

A poignant, quirky and effective alternative to the usual soulless, computer-generated summer fare.

It's dramatically unsatisfying.

Full Grown Men marks the feature debut of director David Munro, who was born and raised in Miami and shoots Florida like a native.

In the end, Full Grown Men tells an amusing tale, and the cameo scenes from Alan Cumming and Amy Sedaris are not to be missed.

Friedlander offers a nicely subtle performance, but the other actors - including Alan Cumming, Deborah Harry and Amy Sedaris - appear to have turned up as a favor to the director. Don't feel obliged to follow their lead.

Obviously, Munro is reaching for something about how people allow themselves to get mired in the past. But his characters and situations are so exaggerated and dreary that his point gets quickly lost.

This candy-colored movie, whose soft hues match the colored cereal loops that Alby devours at his mother's house, is a post-Freudian fable that wants to be a kind of anti-"Wizard of Oz" for a culture inundated with toys and toons.