The Oranges

This laboured families-in-strife comedy drama doesn't merit the calibre of its stellar line-up. Hugh Laurie, Catherine Keener, Oliver Platt and Allison Janney play best friends and neighbours in a well-to-do New Jersey suburb. They hope that Laurie and Keener's son (Adam Brody) will fall for Platt and Janney's daughter (Leighton Meester) when she comes home for Thanksgiving after a five-year absence. Instead, she begins an affair with Laurie, causing turmoil and threatening marriages, but there is a suggestion that these complacent, middle-aged people needed their lives shaken up. It's all mildly amusing, if fairly obvious, stuff and it's impeccably played by the superb cast. But you can't help feeling that they all deserve something rather more worthy of their talents.