The melodramatic film has numerous light and comical touches, and the performances are uniformly good. The film's pace, however, has the consistency of molasses.

A ridiculously redemptive finale negates almost all of the preceding dramatic tension and resurrects a cloying Richard Marx chestnut to boot.

Whose life, Wesley asks in the movie's narration, is he living? Judging from all the sterile office and apartment space and his mile-long face, I'd say Bruce Willis's in "The Sixth Sense.''

Certainly one of Perry's best films yet.