by Karyn L. Beach

Reign Over Me is a film with the best of intentions. It’s a film that wants to say a lot about the devastation of loss, the nature of grief, and the power and importance of friendship. But like a lot of films with good intentions, it gets bogged down under its own weight and as a result, it doesn’t accomplish nearly as much as it would have liked.

Alan Johnson (Don Cheadle) is a successful Manhattan dentist with a beautiful wife (Jada Pinkett-Smith) and two beautiful daughters (Camille LaChe Smith and Imani Hakim). His old college roommate, Charlie Fineman (Adam Sandler) had been living a very similar life as a dentist with his own beautiful wife and three daughters … that is until the morning of September 11, 2001. His wife and children were headed from Boston to California and were on one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center. Since that time, Charlie’s world has come to a screeching halt. Now, his life consists of video games, riding around town on his motorized scooter and occasionally playing drums with a local band. He’s shut out former friends and everyone associated with his former life.

Alan had tried unsuccessfully to contact his old friend to no avail when one day he runs into him on the street. The two re-establish their relationship. Charlie helps Alan break out of the boring monotony of his life and Alan helps Charlie re-establish a connection to the real world.

Both Cheadle and Sandler deliver solid performances and there are enough light moments to keep the movie from being completely gloomy. Yet something is missing. Something big.

For the majority of the film, we see Charlie stuck in a deep pit of depression, grief and post-traumatic stress disorder. His is undeniably a sympathetic character and we, the audience, are rooting for him to start piecing his life back together, but that never really happens. By the time it starts to happen, the film abruptly ends.

Since Reign Over Me is all about Charlie and Alan, the supporting cast, especially Jada Pinkett-Smith, don’t get an opportunity to really delve into their characters. In fact, the supporting cast, like the audience, spends most of the film waiting for Charlie to have some sort of big breakthrough.

The payoff for Reign Over Me is just not there. There is no satisfying conclusion. Maybe that’s what writer/director Mike Binder wanted. Maybe he wanted to end the movie on a more realistic note. In real-life there are no clean resolutions and lots of loose ends. That kind of open ending works for some films but in this case, I just felt cheated.