'Beginners' does well, but there's been better

<b>Reel Life mini-review: 'Adult Beginners'</b>

The problem with Ross Katz's not-quite-as-deep-as-it-wants-to-be coming of age drama "Adult Beginners" can be illustrated in an early scene where disgraced tech entrepreneur Jake (Nick Kroll) can't figure out how to open a simple, collapsible baby stroller.

So, he plops his 3-year-old nephew Teddy (twins Caleb and Matthew Paddock) into a travel suitcase on rollers and heads out to the park where parents register grimaces of disapproval.

"What?" Jake says. "You never seen a kid in a suitcase before?"

Thanks, Jake. Are we so dim that we needed a joke explained to us?

"Adult Beginners" works sort of like a comfortably familiar, Noah-Baumbach-lite comedy about the pitfalls of delayed maturity.

After losing his life savings and his friends' funds in an ill-considered investment, Jake, a self-absorbed, charmlessly needy guy, moves into the suburbs with his pregnant sister Justine (a wonderfully warm and sympathetic Rose Byrne) and her likably flawed husband Danny (Bobby Cannavale), plus little Teddy.

Like its jokes, "Adult Beginners" explains its title in a pool scene where Jake and Justine prove to be more frightened of water than their own life choices.

Byrne and Cannavale (worth seeing as Al Pacino's son in "Danny Collins") sink their characters with a sure putter. Kroll's transition from off-putting jerk to approachable jerk is a rough one, but eventually he wins us over without pandering.

"Adult Beginners" begins with a promise of lifelike spontaneity before it succumbs to rotely written domestic clichés: old wounds that must be healed, timely epiphanies and grossly personal affronts dismissed way too lightly.

This grating/loving shared history sibling relationship was better nuanced, especially non-verbally in "The Skeleton Twins." The "little boy falling off playground equipment under a distracted guardian" device was handled more forcefully in "Kramer vs. Kramer."

And the metaphorical installation of weaker 24-inch studs instead of stronger 16-inch studs in a new home construction - which Danny does to save money - was better utilized in John Turturro's "Mac."

"Adult Beginners" opens at the Music Box Theatre. Rated R for drug use and language. 90 minutes. ★ ★

<i> Film critic Dann Gire's column runs Friday in Time out! Follow him on Twitter at @DannGireDHFilm.</i>