Film is a schizophrenic hodge-podge of elements from chick flick sentimentality and a frat beer drinking party sideshow. The attempt to mix the two is handled with little cohesion, and never seals the deal for either audience (and certainly falls short of appealing to both, which is what it seems to want).

We meet a grieving woman (Jennifer Garner) who was engaged, but her fiancé dies just before the wedding. That would seem to be an emotional story of healing and moving on, right? Wrong. At the funeral, we meet his idiot friends (Kevin Smith and two other jokers, all who turn in rotten performances). What one of them is doing at the funeral home is appalling; to put it bluntly, the guy is a jerk. OK, so it's supposed to be a sophomoric comedy? Wrong again.

Grit your teeth, there's still more clichéd characters coming. Enter the blonde bimbo, and her weird kid. A lot of the plot revolves around these two. She mumbles about yoga; the kid just stands around robotically throwing CD's on the floor. Real cute; I wanted to throw a ten ton crate of CD's on his head. Anyway, these two have a secret that drives the plot along. Presence of kid = suspicion. If you catch my drift.

People do stuff that doesn't add up. There's a romance that has as much chemistry as two patches of dead seaweed. The attraction makes no sense, either, in light of earlier events in the story. Most characters suddenly change in odd ways, rather than evolve logically. Random sight gags evoke no laughs. The kid continues to be obnoxious.

Nobody in the cast except for Garner makes any effort; they just don't seem to care. Even Ben-Jen's work here is not quite up to par, in light of her proved potential in other roles.

The ending is ridiculous (and about as likely as the odds of winning a 50 million dollar lottery). It's like somebody tagged it on, because they didn't know how to close out the thing. The movie never does figure out which genre(s) it wants to be, either.

Jennifer Garner's fiancé is killed in an accident just before their wedding in idyllic Boulder, Colorado. He was an outdoorsy dude who ran a fly-fishing shop with one of his three pals (Sam Jaeger),who lived with a boozy, Zennish herbal tea peddler (Kevin Smith); the last of the gang, Timothy Olyphant, embodies the most shallow and lascivious of his current home, Malibu. He's the one who mourns by boinking a caterer in the upstairs bathroom after the funeral.

After their six-year relationship ends as it did, Garner is sympathetically devastated ...for a while. Then this faint echo of The Big Chill disintegrates into soapy nonsense. Her late almost-hubby fathered a child in California he'd never mentioned, while sending monthly checks from a large account she never knew was part of the package. One pal 'fesses up to the huge crush he's always harbored for Garner, silently agonizing over her naive devotion to an undeserving philanderer. The "other woman" (Juliette Lewis, riffing as a sexy, New Agey flake with no apparent effort) and their kid show up. Things get worse, as Garner learns more about the timing and other details of his secret life. She finds solace and more from an unlikely source - all in about the same time it takes for rigor mortis to set in on the stiff who stiffed her.

The more the cast members talk and act, the more alienating they become. Within an hour - if not sooner - the generally engaging Garner and her circle grow tiresome, or worse. Smith, who's mainly there for comic relief, is the least annoying of the lot. But he's just circling the margins, playing it like Jack Black on Prozac. Nothing that happens makes sense, or justifies ongoing empathy with the characters. The splendor of Colorado's pastoral summer scenery is polluted by the plot. If the EPA had required an Environmental Impact study, they might have stopped the production. Another casualty of governmental cutbacks and overworked agencies.

Interesting film where Jennifer Garner finds out that her fiancé, who has died unexpectedly, led a very different life than what she could have ever envisioned.

The guy was a millionaire who had a one night stand with Juliette Lewis and was supporting the child from this alleged liaison.

This story is basically dealing with the relationships formed after the death of Gray, the groom-to-be.

We see the interactions among the friends and the ultimate rediscovery of love among them.

When a DNA test proves otherwise, we see the noble actions of a mother who is willing to continue sharing her son's wealth.

The film is well worth watching due to the strong interpersonal relationships that are depicted here.