(2004) A woman runs down a street with a man running after her, yelling, "Wait!" just before she dashes into another street where she's struck by a car. Director/writer Don Roos's film - a Pandora's box of secrets galore - then leaps backward twenty years to Los Angeles of 1983 when Mamie Toll, 17, seduces her new sixteen-year-old stepbrother Charley Peppitone when her mother marries his father; four months later she goes to Phoenix to have an abortion.

Nineteen years forward, with Charley's dad and Mamie's mom in the cemetery together, the brother and sister have inherited their parents' restaurants. Mamie (Lisa Kudrow) counsels women at an abortion clinic; Charley (Steve Coogan) has a gay partner Gil (David Sutcliffe). At a massage parlor Mamie goes to see Javier (Bobby Cannavale) for sexual satisfaction. A lesbian couple, Diane and Pam (Laura Dern), have a little boy Max, whose mother Pam was artificially inseminated with a donor's sperm. Gil tells Charley of his theory that little Max is actually Charley son.

Otis (Jason Ritter) - the 22-year-old son of a wealthy, single father, Frank McKee (Tom Arnold), with whom he resides - plays drums with his band at one of Charley's restaurants and after hearing Jude (Maggie Gyllenhaal) sing karaoke asks her to join the band as a temporary replacement for their lead singer.

Nicky Kunitz (Jesse Bradford) has a great idea for a documentary film about a mother rediscovering her lost child and approaches Mamie, offering her information about her son (about whom she's never told anyone) if she will participate in his film.

Mamie and Javier break into Nicky's motel room, searching for information about the boy she secretly put up for adoption long ago; Nicky encounters them as they're exiting his room. To explain their being there, Mamie tells Nicky that he could make an even better documentary of Javier, an undocumented Mexican who has become a successful sex worker. Nicky titles his film Happy Ending after Javier explains that he provides uptight women with "a happy ending, the full release."

Meanwhile, another sex worker and gold digger, Jude, who's been evicted from her apartment, provides closeted-gay Otis with his first ever sexual union in exchange for a place to stay, while scheming after his father.

Elsewhere, Gil acts on his plan to prove that Max is Charley's son, telling the two women he needs a DNA sample because Charley has an incurable hereditary brain disease. On camera Javier says: "A secret that makes them feel shame. That's why I do it, and the tips are good."

Is Jude pregnant with Otis's or Frank's baby, and is she willing to give birth? Six months later, when the opening scene takes place, the revelations and relationships become even curiouser and curiouser in this wonderland.

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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