- Failing to make it on his own, twenty-seven-year-old Jim moves back in with his parents and deals with crippling family obligations.
- Jim is a young man who, after deciding he can't make it on his own, moves back to his hometown in Indiana -- under his parents' roof. He's saved from his family's dysfunction by a local woman and her son, who sees him as a father figure.—Anonymous
- Jim runs out of money in New York and returns to the small Indiana town he grew up in. He doesn't enjoy being around his family and doesn't want to help out at the family business. After his brother ends up in a coma, he is forced to help out at the ladder factory his parents run. He meets his Uncle Stacey who is using the plant to disguise his drug dealing. Jim meets a beautiful nurse with a precocious son and starts a unsteady romance. Love and patience eventually help him to find some happiness in life.—poco loco
- Jim (Casey Affleck) is a perennially gloomy 27-year-old aspiring writer from Goshen, Indiana who had moved to NYC in hopes of finding success with his writing. After two years of barely making a living as a dog walker (and worked at Applebee's part-time), he decides to move back home to his parents' house in Goshen. Jim has been ignored all his life by everybody. Jim returns by bus and is dropped at the Goshen bus station. He can't even get a lift and has to walk all the way home. Jim is in tears by the time he gets home.
Jim's 32-year-old brother Tim (Kevin Corrigan), a recently divorced father of two young girls whose business recently failed, has moved back into his parents' home. He works in the ladder factory that's owned and operated by their father Don (Seymour Cassel) and cheerful mother Sally (Mary Kay Place). Jim has no interest in the family business, and he resists pressure to start working there.
Jim avoids all crowded places and even seeks out a bar where he doesn't have to talk to anybody. Jim meets Anika (Liv Tyler), a nurse, in a bar and they end up having sex in a hospital bed, and Jim finishes almost immediately.
After a conversation between the two brothers on whose life is more pathetic, Tim, having previously made repeated unsuccessful attempts to commit suicide, drives his car into a tree. He is gravely injured, in a coma, and hospitalized. Jim finally gives in to Don and works in the factory by taking over Tim's duties. He also takes over Tim's job as the coach of a girls' basketball team. The team, which has not scored a single point in the last 14 games, includes both of Tim's daughters. Tim told the girls not to throw the ball, unless they were positive that they could score, but Jim changes the approach and encourages the girls to create more scoring opportunities.
While visiting Tim is in the hospital, Jim runs into Anika, who works in pediatrics. They arrange a date, but on arriving to pick her up, he discovers she is a single mother with a boy named Ben (Jack Rovello). Jim is honest with Anika and says that he suffers from Chronic despair. Their relationship progresses, however. Anika is sympathetic to Jim's problems, and she decides to stand by him even when he tries to convince her that it's in her best interest to not be around him.
At the ladder factory, Jim encounters his uncle Stacy or "Stace" (Mark Boone Junior), who prefers to be called "Evil." Evil tells Jim that sally has been on tranquilizers to deal with her sorrows, which is why she is always so perked up. Over a joint, Evil offers advice about premature ejaculation (he tells Jim to hold his pee and pee in squirts to improve his "holding" capacity), and they become better acquainted. He offers Jim recreational drugs and asks him to open him a checking account so he can pay for things by mail. Evil says that he had been banned by banks due to some old incident. Evil gives Jim $4,000, saying it is saved-up birthday, Christmas and graduation presents. Tim comes out of the coma. Tim is thrilled to find that Jim had sex with Anika. To him, this means that Anika has no standards and would even sleep with Tim.
Jim's mother, Sally, is arrested by DEA officers for allegedly shipping illegal drugs through the store's FedEx account. They got proof of her signature on more than a dozen packages. Evil is the drug dealer to which he admits, but Jim cannot get him to confess. Evil points out that Jim will be implicated if he tries to report him, as he has opened an account with his cash and will test positive for drug use. An eternal optimist, Sally makes friends with her fellow prisoners and accepts a Hemmingway novel from Jim when he visits. Eventually she is released on bail. The DEA declares that the entire store and factory was a front for dealing in drugs and seal the premises.
Despite working at the factory and feeling responsible for his mother's imprisonment, Jim allows Anika to soften his depression and starts believing that life is worth living. Anika continues to visit Jim at his home, and even spends time with Tim while he is on the long road to recovery. Jim invites Anika and her son to move with him to New Orleans, but after Jim gets cold feet and makes a questionable decision (Jim holds back Ben for basketball practice without telling Anika. This leads Anika to believe that Jim has no clue what parenting is all about), the move seems to be off the table.
Jim finally leaves for New Orleans alone, leaving a note for his parents promising not to take their love for granted again and revealing Evil as the drug dealer. Anika shows up at the bus station to say goodbye. Jim departs on the bus, but as Anika drives home with her son, he runs after them, luggage in hand. He asks "for a ride" and the movie ends with Jim, out-of-breath, finally getting a bottle of water from Ben in the back seat.
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