Jim Belushi Archives – CULTURE MIX

Review: ‘The Chronology of Water,’ starring Imogen Poots, Thora Birch, Susannah Flood, Tom Sturridge, Kim Gordon, Michael Epp, Earl Cave, Esme Creed Miles and Jim Belushi

January 14, 2026

by Carla Hay

Imogen Poots in “The Chronology of Water” (Photo courtesy of The Forge)

Directed by Kristen Stewart

Culture Representation: Taking place in various parts of the United States, from 1969 to 2016, the dramatic film “The Chronology of Water” (based on writer Lidia Yuknavitch’s 2011 memoir of the same name) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few Asians) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: Lidia Yuknavitch experiences a troubled life of substance addiction, self-harm and trauma from childhood sexual abuse in her journey to becoming a celebrated writer.

Culture Audience: “The Chronology of Water” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of Yuknavitch, filmmaker Kristen Stewart, the movie’s headliners, and well-acted biographical movies about talented but tortured artists.

Thora Birch and Imogen Poots in “The Chronology of Water” (Photo courtesy of The Forge)

Bold and intentionally chaotic, the biographical drama “The Chronology of Water” takes viewers into the troubled mind of writer Lidia Yuknavitch, with a tour-de-force performance from Imogen Poots. It’s an unsettling but memorable film. Some viewers won’t like the stream-of-consciousness format of the film, while others will appreciate that the movie is like a puzzle telling the story of Yuknavitch’s life, with not all the puzzle pieces being found at the end. “The Chronology of Water” has a lot of quick-cut editing, to reflect the fragmented memories depicted in the movie.

Written and directed by Kristen Stewart, “The Chronology of Water” is Stewart’s feature-film directorial debut. Stewart is also one of the producers of the film. “The Chronology of Water” had its world premiere at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. The movie is based on Yuknavitch’s 2011 memoir of the same name. “The Chronology of Water” (whose timeline is from 1969 to 2016) takes place in various parts of the United States. The movie was actually filmed in Malta.

Poots portrays Yuknavitch (who was born in San Francisco on June 18, 1963) from her teenage years until her early 50s. She also does voiceover narration that often sounds like poetry readings. The movie chronicles Yuknavitch’s journey from surviving sexual abuse from her father; going from being a swimming star at her high school to a failed attempt at becoming an Olympic swimmer because of substance addiction; and her eventual discovery of her talent as a writer. Yuknavitch’s bisexuality, three marriages and her experiences with pregnancy are also depicted in the movie.

For the purposes of this review, the real people will be referred to be their last names. The movie characters will be referred to by their first names. “The Chronology of Water,” which is told in five chapters, has occasional flashbacks to Lidia’s childhood to show the abuse that she suffered from her cruel father Mike (played by Michael Epp), who had a Jekyll and Hyde personality. The abuse is not shown in explicit details, but there are sound effects of the beatings and rapes that leave no doubt about what is happening.

In real life, Yuknavitch’s birth surname was Yukman. She changed her surname to Yuknavitch as an adult. In order to avoid confusion, the movie makes Lidia have the surname Yuknavitch during her childhood and teen years. To the outside world, her family seems to be a typical middle-class family in Gainesville, Florida. But behind closed doors, the family was very dysfunctional and hiding years of horrific abuse.

Lidia at 6 or 7 years old (played by Anna Wittowsky) is seen as someone who was very close to and almost worshipful of her sister Claudia (played by Marlena Sniega), who is about seven or eight years older than Lidia. Claudia experiences abuse from their father too, but since the movie is told from Lidia’s perspective, Claudia’s pain is hinted at but not fully explored. Claudia tries to protect Lidia, but since they both live in fear of their father and because Claudia is also a child, there’s a limit on what Claudia can do to stop the abuse. The sisters’ mother Dorothy (played by Susannah Flood) has alcoholism and is often too drunk to notice or care that her daughters are being abused.

As a teenager, Lidia excels as a swimming athlete, but even her accomplishments are fraught with experiences that damage her self-esteem. An unnamed and unseen male coach does weigh-ins of the female swimmers on the school’s team and gives them a hard spank on the rear end for each pound of extra weight that he thinks the swimmer should lose. And when Lidia gets only partial (not full) swimming scholarship offers from colleges and universities, her father is furious and treats her as if she’s a loser.

Just like many kids abused by a parent, Lidia has hatred of the abusive parent but still loves the parent and wants the parent’s approval. Mike has criticisms of almost everything that Lidia does. If she doesn’t wear feminine clothes, he snarls at her, “Are you trying to look like a man?” He tries to control everything that she does and plays mind games with Lidia about how he feels about her.

A scene that shows Mike’s bizarre moodiness takes place in the garage of the family’s house. Lidia, who is in her late teens and close to graduating from high school, wants to run away from home. Her father sees her in the garage and tells her in a gentle voice, “I want you to know that I love you,” before his face fills with rage and he snaps, “You fucking whore!” It’s implied that Mike has an undiagnosed mental illness, but that’s still no excuse for his disgusting abuse.

It should come as no surprise that when Lidia moves away from her family to go to college in Texas, she tries to submerge her trauma by abusing alcohol and drugs. One day, when she’s hanging out on a college campus lawn, she sees a mild-mannered student named Phillip (played by Earl Cave), who’s by himself as he sings and strums an acoustic guitar. Lidia can sense that Phillip—who is sensitive, kind, and loving—is the opposite of her father. Lidia sets out to seduce Phillip and succeeds.

But the relationship of Lidia and Phillip is off-kilter from the start because Lidia has so much self-hatred that she’s not in a place in her life where she can truly have a healthy and loving relationship. Phillip’s qualities that initially attracted Lidia to him end up being repulsive to her. She complains to Phillip that he’s passive and “too nice” for her. She purposely instigates mean-spirited arguments with him, almost as if she wants Phillip to break up with her.

Phillip doesn’t mistreat her and he doesn’t want to break up with her, but you know things will not end well for this couple. After the first time that Lidia goes in rehab, Phillip arrives to pick her up in a car when she completes the program and tells her that he’s proud of her. Lidia, who is in a sour mood, then begins to insult him. But by the end of the conversation, she proposes marriage to him, and he says yes. This is her first doomed marriage. Years later, in hindsight, Lidia expresses remorse for how badly she treated Phillip during their relationship.

As adults, sisters Lidia and Claudia (played by Thora Birch) are in and out of each other’s lives, mostly because their lives go in completely different directions. Claudia’s adult life is relatively stable with her husband (who is never seen in the movie), while Lidia’s life is very messy. Claudia remains steadfastly loyal to Lidia whenever Lidia needs her. Their parents show up for milestone events in Lidia’s life, but as an adult, Lidia seems to purposely avoid her parents as much as possible.

Lidia’s talent for writing is noticed by certain people, including her close friend Claire (played by Esme Creed Miles), who later becomes Lidia’s lover. Claire encourages a reluctant Lidia to join a University of Oregon graduate-school program taught by writer/counterculture celebrity Ken Kesey (played by Jim Belushi), whose claim to fame is the 1962 novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and for being a founder of the psychedelic artistic group the Merry Pranksters. In the movie, Ken is portrayed as an eccentric, friendly, drug-taking burnout, who encourages his students to be their best and is haunted by the death of his son. From 1987 to 1988, Lidia is part of this student group that collaborates with Ken on the group-authored book “Caverns.” She eventually gets her Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Oregon.

Lidia’s second marriage is to an avant-garde performance artist named Devin (played by Tom Sturridge), and it’s a different type of failure from her first marriage. Devin also has alcoholism, so their marriage plays out in the movie like fractured memories of someone who had too many drunken blackouts during the relationship. Lidia’s arrest for driving while intoxicated is one of her “rock bottom” moments, but “The Chronology of Water” doesn’t have any details about whether or not Lidia ever had years of sobriety from alcohol and drugs after admitting to having these addictions.

Lidia’s third marriage is to filmmaker Andy Mingo (played by Charlie Carrick), whom she meets in her 40s, when he is a student in her writing class, and she is a semi-famous writer who can’t afford to have a car. Andy is compassionate and patient, but he’s no pushover, like her first husband Phillip. It’s during this part of Lidia’s life that she’s not the self-destructive train wreck that she once was. And although she doesn’t expect to fall in love with Andy, she does.

Poots has done some great acting in movies over the years, but she is usually overlooked for major awards. She is a marvel to watch as Lidia in “The Chronology of Water,” as she embodies every type of emotion in this gutsy and compelling performance. Birch also gives a fantastic performance as the more low-key Claudia, who may not be as outwardly angry as Lidia, but the ways Birch expresses Claudia’s inner agony and turmoil through her eyes and body language are just as credible and impactful.

The movie has an interesting casting choice with Belushi, who is known mostly for his comedic roles. Ken is the closest thing that the movie has for comic relief, but the comedy is bittersweet. Ken is someone who is way past his prime, and he knows it, but he still has a certain zest for life that inspires his students. Kim Gordon (former bass guitarist for the rock band Sonic Youth) is another unexpected casting choice: She has a cameo (about five minutes of screen time) as an unnamed photographer who gives dominatrix service to Lidia.

As a filmmaker, Stewart shows unique artistic vision in “The Chronology of Water,” which purposely avoids pandering to mainstream predictability. And it’s the same reason why some viewers might feel alienated by how this story is presented: There are no trite or easy answers to Lidia’s problems. Some people might think the narrative style of “The Chronology of Water” is too rambling and pretentious. Others will think it’s refreshing and challenging because it will make viewers curious about where the story is headed next. The movie has sharp observations about the beauty, ugliness, joy, despair and everything in between about Lidia’s life.

The movie gets its title from the fact that water is a constant theme in Lidia’s life, whether it is the escape she feels from swimming, or when she is in a shower after cutting herself and blood is seen going down the drain, or she finds comfort from taking a bath in a bathtub. Lidia also experiences some life-altering moments near a beach. “The Chronology of Water” is not supposed to be an easy film to watch. But for people open-minded enough to experience the movie, it offers a clear and hopeful message that recovery from trauma and self-sabotage is difficult but can be possible and is an ongoing process.

The Forge released “The Chronology of Water” in select U.S. cinemas on December 5, 2025, with wider expansion to more U.S. cinemas on January 9, 2026.

Review: ‘Song Sung Blue’ (2025), starring Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson

December 15, 2025

by Carla Hay

Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson in “Song Sung Blue” (Photo courtesy of Focus Features)

“Song Sung Blue” (2025)

Directed by Craig Brewer

Culture Representation: Taking place from 1991 to 1993, primarily in Wisconsin, the dramatic film “Song Sung Blue” (inspired by true events) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some African Americans and Asians) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A husband and a wife, who have a Neil Diamond tribute act together called Lightning & Thunder, experience various challenges in their relationship and in their career.

Culture Audience: “Song Sung Blue” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of Neil Diamond, the movie’s headliners, and dramatic depictions of how showbiz couples work together.

In a drama about a Neil Diamond tribute act, expect to see some cornball moments, engaging pop music performances and plenty of heartbreak. “Song Sung Blue” (inspired by true events) delivers in all these areas. Kate Hudson is a standout.

Written and directed by Craig Brewer, “Song Sung Blue” is named after singer/songwriter Diamond’s 1972 hit of the same name. “Song Sung Blue” is also the name of director Greg Kohs’ 2008 documentary about Lightning & Thunder, the Neil Diamond tribute act consisting of a Milwaukee-based husband-and-wife duo named Mike Sardina and Claire Sardina, formerly known as Claire Stengl. In real life, Lightning & Thunder performed from 1989 to 2006.

However, the dramatic feature film “Song Sung Blue” truncates the Lightning & Thunder story by condensing it into a two-year period (from 1991 to 1993) and changing some facts to fit into the story’s timeline and narrative. Writer/director Brewer, who is also a producer of “Song Sung Blue,” has said he’s wanted to make this movie ever since he saw the “Song Sung Blue” documentary at the 2008 Indie Memphis Film Festival. Brewer’s “Song Sung Blue” movie had its world premiere at the 2025 edition of AFI Fest.

“Song Sung Blue,” which is told in chronological order, begins with a close-up of the face of divorced dad Mike Sardina (played by Hugh Jackman), as he talks about being an entertainer and his multiple music projects. He says his stage name is Lightning. He performs as a solo act and as a guitarist of a R&B band called the Esquires, where he says he’s the only white guy in the band. Mike brags that he’s like “Chuck Berry, Barry Manilow and the Beatles, all rolled into one.”

It all sounds like Mike is talking as if he’s in an audition. But as the camera pans away from his face, it’s revealed that Mike is really in a group meeting for Alcoholics Anonymous. Mike is a member of this group. And on this particular day, he proudly tells the group that this is the 20th anniversary of his sobriety. Mike is also a Vietnam War veteran with a heart condition.

Mike has an acoustic guitar with him and starts singing “Song Sung Blue.” This scene tells you right away that Mike is a hammy showoff if he’s the type of person who uses an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting to do a performance as if he’s the headliner at a dive bar. It’s at this point in the movie that viewers will be intrigued to see where the story is going, or will be immediately turned off and find it difficult to endure more.

Mike, carrying his acoustic guitar, then goes to the Wisconsin State Fair, where he is scheduled to perform as a Don Ho impersonator, as part of a “Legends” ensemble show with other celebrity impersonators, who imitate singers such as Elvis Presley, James Brown, Willie Nelson, Barbra Streisand, Buddy Holly and Patsy Cline. However, Mike changes his mind and announces in the dressing room that he wants to perform as Lightning, singing the rock cover songs that Mike wants to sing.

This decision does not go down well with the show’s management, which threatens to fire Mike. The Pasty Cline impersonator is a divorced mother named Claire Stengl (played by Hudson), who has been quietly observing this drama in the dressing room. Mike refuses to perform as Don Ho, so Claire suggests to Mike that he perform as Neil Diamond instead.

Mike doesn’t think Diamond’s songs are rock’n’roll enough either, but he warms up to the idea when Claire reminds him that many of Diamond’s songs have rock beats and rock melodies. The Elvis impersonator, whose name is Earl and whose stage name is TCB (played by Jayson Warner Smith), gets upset when Mike says that Mike wants to perform Presley’s “Suspicious Minds” as part of Mike’s Lightning act that night.

Mike doesn’t get a chance to perform as Lightning at this state fair because he’s immediately fired. However, Claire made quite an impression on him. It isn’t long before Mike asks around and gets Claire’s contact information. (In real life, Mike and Claire met when they were still married to other people.) Brewer’s “Song Sung Blue” movie depicts Mike and Claire’s first date as starting off as platonic, but they have undeniable romantic chemistry together and share the same passion for performing in front of live audiences.

Claire and Mike aren’t interested in writing their own songs. They’re happy doing cover versions of other people’s hit songs. Claire is a talented pianist who works part-time as a hair stylist. She tells Mike one of her beauty salon co-workers can help give Mike a Neil Diamond makeover by changing his hair and providing a wardrobe that’s similar to what Diamond wore during his 1970s and 1980s heyday. (Expect to see a lot of big hair and sparkling clothes.)

On their first date, Claire brings Mike back to her home so they can jam on some of Diamond’s songs. Claire lives with her two children: daughter Rachel Cartright (played by Ella Anderson), who’s about 16 years old, and son Dana Cartright (played by Hudson Hensley), who’s 11 or 12 years old. Claire’s unnamed mother (played by Cecelia Riddett) also lives in the household, but Claire’s mother is about to move into a nursing home. Rachel, Dana and Claire’s mother all react with a certain amount of suspicion toward Mike when they first meet Mike. Rachel is the most stand-offish and rudest to Mike.

Mike works part-time as a mechanic. He lives alone in a small house, but he gets regular visits from his daughter Angelina Sardina (played by King Princess), who is about 17 years old when the story begins. Mike’s ex-wife has full custody of Angelina, a laid-back type who likes to smoke marijuana. Angelina is more accepting of Claire than Rachel is of Mike. However, when Angelina and Rachel meet each other for the first time, they become instant friends. Anderson excels in her role as Rachel (who goes through a lot of changes in the story) and gives the best performance of the younger principal cast members.

On their first date, Mike and Claire tell each other a little bit about their personal backgrounds, including their failed marriages. Claire (who changed her surname back to her maiden name Stengl after the divorce) says that her ex-husband was a “good guy” but he would laugh at her for her musical aspirations and made her “feel small.” Mike tells Claire that he was to blame for his divorce because he was the one who made his ex-wife “feel small” in the marriage. The ex-spouses of Mike and Claire are not seen in the movie.

Mike confesses that he used to be very angry and selfish. He also tells Claire that he’s recovering from alcoholism and has been sober for 20 years. It’s later revealed that Claire has her own personal struggles with mental health. Before and after she met Mike, she was on prescribed medication for depression.

In the beginning of the movie, Mike is financially struggling and three months behind on his house mortgage payments. Mike’s dentist/friend Dr. Dave Watson (played by Fisher Stevens) tells him during a dental checkup that Mike should sell Mike’s house, but Mike refuses because Mike says the house is the only consistent thing that he can offer to Angelina. During this dental appointment, Dave gives Mike a false tooth engraved with a lightning bolt to fill in a tooth gap on Mike’s upper mouth. Yes, it’s that kind of movie.

Mike and Claire quickly fall in love. And it isn’t long before Mike is convinced he can’t do his Neil Diamond tribute act without Claire on keyboards and backing vocals. In the movie, Mike is the one who comes up with the idea to give Claire the stage name Thunder. And so, Lightning & Thunder are born. Claire and Mike get married. Rachel and Dana eventually grow to love Mike and end up calling him Dad or Papa.

In real life, Lightning & Thunder did more than Diamond cover songs. Lightning & Thunder also performed songs by Cline, Blondie and ABBA. But it’s easy to see why the “Song Sung Blue” filmmakers only focused on the Diamond angle, in order to make the Lightning & Thunder story easier to market as a movie. Also, in real life, Claire didn’t start working with Mike until two years after she auditioned and was rejected for his band.

The next step for Lightning & Thunder is to book gigs. They get help from Mike’s long-suffering friend Mark Shurilla (played by Michael Imperioli), the movie’s Buddy Holly impersonator, who has been let down and betrayed by Mike many times in the past, but the movie doesn’t go into details. It’s through Mark that Mike and Claire meet a talkative and enthusiastic event promoter named Tom D’Amato (played by Jim Belushi), who mainly works with venues in the Midwest.

Dave and a James Brown impersonator named Sex Machine (played by Mustafa Shakir) are also supportive friends who help Mike and Claire in the couple’s career as Lightning & Thunder. A married Thai couple named Somechai (played by Shyaporn Theerakulstit) and Ranee (played by Chacha Tahng), who own a restaurant/bar with karaoke entertainment, are shown later in the movie as people who help Mike and Claire make a Lightning & Thunder comeback, after a major setback nearly derails the career of Lightning & Thunder.

Lightning & Thunder’s first show is a disaster because they’re accidentally booked for a show at a bar attended by motorcycle bikers who want to hear classic rock and hard rock. Mike starts a fist fight with a heckler, and the fight turns into a massive brawl where Tom gets involved. By contrast, a high point in Lightning & Thunder’s career (as already shown in a trailer for “Song Sung Blue”) is when Lightning & Thunder get a gig as the opening act for Pearl Jam, whose lead singer Eddie Vedder (played by John Beckwith) personally requested Lightning & Thunder as the opening act for Pearl Jam’s show at a large theater in Milwaukee.

One of the recurring scenarios in the movie is Mike’s fixation on Diamond’s 1970 song “Soolaimón,” a tune inspired by African rhythms. It’s the Diamond song that Mike loves to perform the most because he thinks it’s Diamond’s most underrated single. Mike doesn’t hate a crowd-pleasing Diamond song like 1969’s “Sweet Caroline,” but Mike thinks “Sweet Caroline” is more of an obligation than a joy to perform.

Mike stubbornly wants “Soolaimón” to be the first song in Lightning & Thunder’s performance set instead of any of the more well-known Diamond songs that other tribute artists would’ve chosen. He wants “Sweet Caroline” to be the encore song. This decision leads to some conflicts in the movie. Other songs from Diamond performed in the movie include “I Am I Said,” “Cracklin’ Rosie,” “Cherry Cherry,” “Play Me,” “Crunchy Granola Suite,” “Forever in Blue Jeans,” “Holly Holy,” “I’m a Believer,” “Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show,” “I’ve Been This Way Before” and Diamond’s version of the Christmas classic “O Holy Night.”

There is much more to “Song Sung Blue” than a tribute act trying to make their mark in showbiz. Mike, Claire and their blended family experience some unexpected difficulties that are not revealed in the “Song Sung Blue” trailers. One of these challenges is hinted at in the trailer but won’t be revealed in this review since most viewers won’t know the real-life story before seeing the movie.

The absolute highlight of “Song Sung Blue” is Hudson’s performance, which shows her best acting range in years. She fully commits to her Wisconsin accent and gives the movie’s most emotionally moving performance. Claire is effervescent but has enormous struggles that Hudson depicts realistically in this movie. And unlike many of her actress peers who’ve Botoxed their faces to look like stiff-looking aliens from outer space, Hudson isn’t afraid to look her authentic age, including wrinkles, body flab, and all the physical things that most people have in middle-age. The movie has several unfiltered closeups of people’s faces, so the camera isn’t letting any of the cast members hide what their faces really look like.

Jackman, who is Australian in real life, sometimes lets his real accent slip through when he tries to sound American in “Song Sung Blue.” It’s a distraction and it’s why Jackman isn’t completely believable as a Wisconsin native. Mike is great at lifting people’s spirits and is a charismatic performer, but he’s also a bit of an egotistical dictator/control freak. And because he’s the lead singer, he often treats Claire like a sidekick instead of an equal partner.

Jackman doesn’t disappoint when it comes to his singing in the movie, but his singing talent has been on display for years because of all the musicals he’s done in his career. Hudson, who released her first album (“Glorious”) in 2024, is the more effective singer in this movie because of the wider range of emotions that she expresses. If Mike is the heart of Lightning & Thunder, then Claire is the soul.

The timeline in “Song Sung Blue” is a little jumbled and contradictory, which makes some of this movie’s screenwriting look sloppy. Toward the end of the movie, Mike says he’s celebrating his 22nd year of sobriety, but something happens, and it’s shown that the year he made this comment was in 1997, not 1993. There’s no way that this movie could take place in a period longer than two years because Dana (the youngest child in the family) still looks the same from the beginning of the movie until the end.

“Song Sung Blue” would’ve benefited from having a story timeline that takes place over a longer period of time. Certain things happen a little too fast in the movie that makes some parts of the story look contrived, even though these things happened in real life—just not the way it was depicted so quickly in the movie. In addition, some of the movie’s dialogue will make cynics roll their eyes in how hokey it sounds. Despite these flaws, “Song Sung Blue” should appeal to anyone who tolerates or enjoys musical tribute acts and who can appreciate what many of these much-maligned artists often go through in their struggles to make a living and survive.

Focus Features will release “Song Sung Blue” in U.S. cinemas on December 25, 2025. Sneak previews of the movie were shown in U.S. cinemas on December 14 and December 15, 2025.

Review: ‘Gigi & Nate,’ starring Marcia Gay Harden, Charlie Rowe, Josephine Langford, Zoe Colletti, Hannah Riley, Jim Belushi and Diane Ladd

September 8, 2022

by Carla Hay

“Gigi & Nate”

Directed by Nick Hamm

Culture Representation: Taking place over a five-year period in Tennessee and briefly in North Carolina, the dramatic film “Gigi & Nate” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans and Latinos) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: After getting quadriplegia at the age of 18, Nate Gibson’s life is changed at the age of 22, when he gets a capuchin monkey named Gigi as a service animal, but that special relationship is threatened when an animal-rights activist group works to ban capuchin monkeys as household pets.

Culture Audience: “Gigi & Nate” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching sappy and frequently boring melodramas about cute animals.

Charlie Rowe, Allie and Marcia Gay Harden in “Gigi & Nate” (Photo by Anne Marie Fox/Roadside Attractions)

If the adorable capuchin monkey in “Gigi & Nate” could speak a human language, she would say, “Get me out of this embarrassing movie.” The monkey is the best thing about this overly sappy, tedious and predictable melodrama. Unfortunately, the trailer for “Gigi & Nate” already reveals about 90% of the movie’s plot. The story’s main conflict is rushed in the last third of the film. And so, that leaves the first-two thirds of “Gigi & Nate” to be a lackluster slog of a self-pitying young man with quadriplegia who starts to have a more positive attitude about life when he gets a capuchin monkey as a service animal.

Directed by Nick Hamm and written by David Hudgins, “Gigi & Nate” doesn’t start off as a terrible film. The last third of the movie, which is supposed to be the best part, is what’s mishandled the most and thereby ruins the movie. In the beginning of “Gigi & Nate,” 18-year-old Nate Gibson (played by Charlie Rowe) is spending his summer vacation with his family in an unnamed city in Tennessee. (“Gigi & Nate” was actually filmed in North Carolina.)

Life is going very well for Nate, who lives several miles away in Nashville and is about to go to an unnamed university in the fall. One day during this vacation, Nate goes with some other young people to an outdoor swimming hole located near some cliffs. Accompanying him on this swimming outing are Nate’s feisty older sister Katy (played by Josephine Langford); Katy’s boyfriend Travis Holter (played by Emilio Garcia-Sanchez); Benji Betts (played by Olly Sholotan); and 17-year-old Lori (played by Zoe Colletti, also known as Zoe Margaret Colletti), who has recently stuck up a mild flirtation with Nate. Lori met Nate at the fireworks outdoor stand where she works.

Nate is a bit of a daredevil, so he takes a dare to jump of a cliff and do a back flip into the water. The water is deep enough not to cause him any injuries. But when Nate emerges from the water, he looks slightly disoriented. It’s a foreshadowing of what’s to come later.

After this swimming trip, Nate is having dinner with family members and friends. In addition to Nate and Katy, the other members of the Gibson family who are on this vacation are Nate’s outspoken homemaker mother Claire Gibson (played by Marcia Hay Harden); Nate’s mild-mannered younger sister Annabelle (played by Hannah Riley), who’s about 15 years old; and Claire’s sassy and sometimes-crude mother Mama Blanche (played by Diane Ladd). Claire’s husband, Dan Gibson (played by Jim Belushi), who is the family patriarch, is away on a business trip.

Nate tells his mother that he’s having very painful headaches, and she advises him to take some aspirin. But what’s wrong with Nate can’t be fixed with aspirin. He collapses in the bathroom, and he ends up in a hospital. Dan is called away from his business trip for this emergency, and he frantically rushes to be with Nate and the rest of the family.

The medical diagnosis is that Nate contracted amoebic meningitis from the water he ingested during that fateful swimming excursion. The meningitis has left him with quadriplegia (paralysis of his arms and legs) and needing to use a wheelchair to move around. Early on in Nate’s hospitalization, Claire makes the decision to have Nate sent by helicopter to their home city of Nashville, where he can get advanced medical care.

This medical condition is emotionally devastating to Nate and his loved ones. He becomes hopeless and bitter, and he spends the next four years of his life basically being a shut-in, because Claire is overprotective and doesn’t want Nate to spend a lot of time outside in public. At one point, Nate becomes so depressed, that when he’s outside in his home’s backyard, he tilts his wheelchair so that he deliberately falls into the backyard pond. It’s a huge cry for help instead of a serious suicide attempt, because Dan is nearby in the backyard, and he immediately rescues Nate.

When Nate is 22 years old, his life changes for the better when Claire comes up with the idea to get Nate a service animal to keep Nate company and to give him encouragement and a better motivation to live. And that’s when capuchin monkey Gigi (played by Allie) comes into Nate’s life. Gigi, who was rescued from a petting zoo, does all the expected things that inspirational pets do in movies like “Gigi & Nate.”

Gigi cheers up Nate when he’s feeling depressed and anxious. Gigi is an enthusiastic assistant during Nate’s physical therapy sessions. Gigi also makes human-like expressions on her face to show that she has a distinct personality and feelings. (Some CGI effects were used in some of the monkey scenes.)

In other words, Gigi helps Nate come out of his reclusive shell. He starts to venture out in public more, with Gigi as his constant companion. One day, Nate is at a local grocery store with Gigi and his mother Claire, and he sees Lori working at the store as a stock clerk.

Lori has not seen or kept in touch with Nate since the day at the swimming hole. And so, at first, Lori doesn’t recognize Nate when they see each other. His hair is longer than it was that day, and he’s now in a wheelchair. Lori is shocked to see Nate in a wheelchair, and she bluntly asks him what happened. She then profusely apologizes for coming off as a little harsh.

Nate tells Lori why he now has quadriplegia, and that Gigi is his service animal. Lori is utterly charmed by Gigi, and she encourages Nate to set up a social media account to document his life with Gigi. And you know what that means later in the story: The videos go viral, and Nate becomes a little famous. Nate and Lori also get closer to each other, since there’s still a romantic spark between them.

At the grocery store where Nate and Lori had their unexpected reunion, someone sees Gigi in the store and isn’t happy about it at all. Her name is Chloe Gaines (played by Welker White), the Tennessee chapter president of Americans for Animal Protection. It’s a group that works to ban certain wild animals as pets in private households, because the group believes these animals should be in a more natural habitat.

Chloe tersely confronts Claire and Nate and informs them that the monkey shouldn’t be in the grocery store because it’s a violation of health code laws. And even though this movie depicts Chloe as a meddling, unreasonable shrew, she is right about the health code violation. Nate allowed Gigi to climb all over the packaged food on the grocery store shelves. As cute as this monkey is, it’s just not sanitary to have animals crawling over food in a grocery store or any place that sells and stores food.

Claire and Nate are very defensive and tell Chloe that Gigi is not just a pet. Gigi is a working service animal. But that’s not a good-enough explanation for Chloe. As shown in the trailer for “Gigi & Nate,” Chloe becomes the “villain” of the story, as she launches a campaign over the next year to ban capuchin monkeys as household pets in Tennessee. The trailer also shows that Gigi gets taken away from Nate. This conflict is crammed in too late in the movie’s last half-hour.

The Gibson family is in regular contact with Carolyn Albion (played by Mishel Prada), the leader of the animal rescue group that saved Gigi from mistreatment at the petting zoo. She’s on the Gibson family’s side in their battle against the Tennessee chapter of Americans for Animal Protection. Nate also has a caretaker named Nogo (played by Sasha Compère), who is also part of the Gibson family’s support system.

The only crucial plot point that isn’t shown in movie’s trailer is how the conflict is ultimately resolved. That part is hastily and sloppily contrived and shown in the movie’s last 10 minutes. It all comes across as very shallow and cloying.

“Gigi & Nate” has a talented cast, but most of the supporting characters are written in a bland way. Mama Blanche has a few lines of dialogue as cheeky zingers, but she’s mostly a sidelined character. Harden and Rowe, as Claire and Nate, have some poignant mother/son moments, while Belushi’s Dan character is a workaholic who has arguments with Claire about Nate’s ongoing care. Dan thinks Claire is overly cautious, and he believes that Nate should have more freedom.

As soon as the monkey comes into the picture as Nate’s service animal, “Gigi & Nate” becomes more about the animal antics and less about the human psychological challenges of adjusting to life with quadriplegia. If the filmmakers thought this psychological angle would be too depressing, then they still could’ve made “Gigi & Nate” a better movie if they made the conflict of the Gibson family versus Americans for Animal Protection a bigger part of the story. That’s why the movie’s showdown scene in a Tennessee state legislative hearing is very truncated and anticlimactic.

“Gigi & Nate” isn’t a completely terrible movie, because the acting performances are competent. It’s just a disappointing film that handles many important issues in a very cringeworthy way that overloads on being hokey, and thereby cheapens the intended messages of the movie. “Gigi & Nate” has some appealing monkey scenes, but is missing a lot of the realistic human grit needed to make this movie more interesting and meaningful.

Roadside Attractions released “Gigi & Nate” in U.S. cinemas on September 2, 2022.