Beginners

Directed by Mike Mills

(R)

***

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The story told in this “buoyant and disarming” new comedy could so easily have turned maudlin, said Betsy Sharkey in the Los Angeles Times. A 75-year-old widower surprises his son by announcing he’s gay and has taken a lover, then enjoys his new life for only a brief time before cancer cuts him down. Yet all this comes early in Mike Mills’s film, in flashbacks that feel “like a slide show of favorite family photos” because they’re “poignant and funny at the same time.” When the late patriarch’s terrier starts sharing his own thoughts (in subtitles), “it somehow makes perfect sense.” Ewan McGregor provides “a remarkably centered” performance as the reeling son, said David Edelstein in New York. Not only must he display filial love, hurt, and sorrow; he has to manage a quietly blossoming romance that begins with the “cutest-ever” meet-cute. At times, it’s Mills who seems to be taking on too much, said Joe Morgenstern in The Wall Street Journal. But Beginners’ “special mixture of sadness, comedy, and hope” wins out. As the ebullient dad, Christopher Plummer is superb. As McGregor’s new flame, Mélanie Laurent “could inspire hope in a heart of stone.”