Imaginary Heroes

Scott Hardie: “It sucked.”

This is precisely the sort of movie that gives artsy debuts by young indie directors a reputation for being unbearably pretentious. Like Sofia Coppola but untempered by her modesty, it piles on the quirky characters and moody navel-gazing, seemingly determined to defeat any chance it has of being genuinely moving because it's too busy being adorable. Sigourney Weaver, Jeff Daniels and Emile Hirsch are game for the material, but they could be a whole lot better with real characters to play instead of these independent-film clichés. If writer-director Dan Harris has much of a frame of reference beyond the superhero films he's more famous for writing, he doesn't demonstrate it here, attempting to tug a heartstring while quoting Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins. The "shocking" final-act revelations only confirm that A) the film doesn't trust the audience to have figured out the obvious a half-hour earlier, and B) it thinks it's a whole lot deeper than it actually is.

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