Although the meat of the film dances the Hollywood studio aesthetic, The Cake Eaters' Super 8 home video footage opening and its Duncan Sheik score introduction promise a mixed take on the typical family fare. Both romantic and informative, this vision of the story's world gracefully sets up tone and exposition. Here are two little boys, playing games, both who adore their mother. As the film opens into present time, the two are found as unsuccessful indie musician Guy Kimbrough (Bartok) and his passive aggressive younger brother Beagle (Andrew George Jr.). Living in a house with father of infidelity, Easy (Bruce Dern), Beagle resents Guy's return home after years of absence and with that absence his mother's funeral missed. A nurse for her during her battle with cancer, Beagle stands as the righteous, and sometimes righteously angry, embodiment of selflessness and moral rectitude.

Complicated in the Kimbrough's family grieving and reconcilation are the plans of teenage Georgia (Kristen Stewart), who in suffering Friedreich's Ataxia, a disease of the nervous system characterized by gait abnormality, slurred speech and heart disorders, fears that the terminal illness will interrupt her plans of sexual encounter. As Beagle and Georgia slowly bond as first friends and then lovers, Easy clashes with longtime mistress Marg (Elizabeth Ashley) and Guy struggles with his still held love for former fiance Stephanie (Miriam Shor.)

Stewart and Shor are the memorables here, the first so dedicated to the physical reality of her character that it's a bit nerve-wracking to watch not Stewart but, in a complete suspension of disbelief, Georgia climb a flight of stairs, the second proving yet again that with all her emotional nuance she needs to be cast as often and as generously as possibly. George Jr. also puts in a par performance, although his character, so often brooding, bears the brunt of the just concealed melodrama.

There's a moment in The Cake Eaters that almost perfectly defines its needed relegation to the B-side. As Georgia and Beagle ride out on his scooter, the teen reaches out her arms and throws back her head. She's free of her parents, particularly her micro-managing artist mother (Talia Balsam), although as she shakes, her arms held out awkwardly, she's certainly not free of her illness. The adaptation of the cliche image would be astoundingly funny, if that is, it weren't also so brutally inconsiderate and morally repugnant to laugh. It's a film like that--where there's no solid ground palatable to stand on, though the ultimate question is, "Does anyone even care to?"

The Cake Eaters plays 7:00 PM, Fri, Apr 11 and 2:30 PM, Mon, Apr 14 at the Landmark Midtown. Purchase tickets.