[title size=”1 to 6″ style=”options: default, sidebar”] Letter Grade: B[/title]

Romantic comedies are a dime a dozen these days. It not like back in the 70’s and 80’s when they could be interesting and charming.

Nowadays romantic comedies are so filled with hackneyed jokes and rolled-over punch lines and scenarios that it can be hard to wonder if there will ever be a decent RomCom ever again. How many romantic comedies named after holidays can one person sit through?

But just when you have given up on all hope, a film like Enough Said comes along and brightens your day. Set in California, Enough Said tells the story of Eva (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), a masseuse dreading the thought of her daughter going to college.

It is when at a party she meets Albert (James Gandolfini), a sweet, but clumsy man whose daughter is also going to college and while getting to know him she falls head over heels, until she learns that her new client (Catherine Keener), is Albert’s ex-wife and tells Eva every little fault of his.

Written and directed by Nicole Holofcener, Enough Said succeeds by treating its characters as actual people.

Louis-Dreyfus and Gandolfini are both excellent together in these “lost-in-translation” roles, while Keener is also superb as a snobby ex-wife.  What makes the film really work is the effortlessness of it. It never feels hammy or weighed-down, everyone in the film feels like an actual person, and Holofcener deserves a ton of credit for moving around this Eva’s meticulous storyline with no major hiccups at all.

With both of their daughters eventually moving out to college, Enough Said’s main focus is the idea of acceptance. We cannot expect everyone to accommodate with our needs or change their quirks or habits because of it. Ultimately we cannot change anyone, but in the end, we should not have to.

With a supporting cast that includes Toni Collette, Ben Falcone, and others, expect a little Oscar buzz for the screenplay and possibly for Louis-Dreyfus herself, and also say goodbye to James Gandolfini, one of the greatest actors around (i.e. Tony Soprano) that will surely be missed.