Movie Review: 'Sometime Other Than Now'

Something you don’t know about me dear reader, I have long nursed a major crush on actress Kate Walsh. I was obsessed with her character on Grey’s Anatomy and when she spun-off to her own show, Private Practice, I never missed an episode, even when the show started to really stink. I even watched every episode of her short-lived sitcom, Bad Judge and enjoyed it just because I think she’s incredible.

So, the new romantic dramedy, Sometime Other Than Now, was pretty much made for me. In Sometime Other Than Now, Kate Walsh stars as Kate, the owner of a cafe/hotel in a tourist trap town. It’s the offseason so business is slow when Sam (Donal Logue) walks in looking for a room. We’ve just met Sam who slept on the beach the night before after crashing his motorcycle and nearly ending up in the ocean.

Thankfully, Sam is not a drunk or a druggie or even a creep as you would reasonably expect. Rather, Sam fell asleep on his motorcycle when he crashed. It turns out that he’d driven all night, halfway around the country to get to California where the mother of his only child, a daughter named Audrey (Trieste Kelly Dunn), has recently died. Sam has picked this moment to return and attempt to comfort his daughter and his heretofore unknown granddaughter, Molly (Alexa Swinton).

To say Sam’s arrival is not welcomed with open arms is… fair. Sam disappeared when Audrey was relatively young. She was old enough to have bonded with her dad and become reasonably bitter that he threw that bond away for reasons he’s never articulated to her. We won’t actually find out what drove him to leave either. The movie is cagey about Sam’s backstory and relies heavily on our affection for star Donal Logue to get us past the many, many questions his arrival raises.

Sometime Other Than Now is telling a two track story. Track one finds Sam and Kate vibing immediately and starting a tentative romance. Track two is Sam’s attempt to reconnect with Audrey and the successes and failures along the way. Both tracks have their merit and while they don’t dovetail as you might expect, they are almost entirely separate, I found myself enjoying both aspects of the story.

The movie is not without issues. Writer-Director Dylan McCormick suffers from that notion that a lead male character in a movie is irresistible to all women regardless of their actual appeal. Thus, when the third act needs a complication, McCormick invents a hot female bartender who spends a few minutes with Sam sucking down bourbon and is eager to hop in bed with him. Sam, mind you, is bearded, disheveled and depressed over his failure with both Audrey as a dad and Kate as a romantic interest.

Sam does nothing remotely interesting or appealing and yet, simply because the bartender is an attractive woman, we fall right into the trap of assuming they will sleep together. Then, the history of cinema tells us that Kate will show up in the morning with coffee and wanting to talk about their fight, see the bartender and leave. The movie falls right into this trap and the final act becomes a little frustrating. The worst of it is saved by the appealing smarts and maturity of Kate Walsh’s performance but it certainly dragged the movie down a little.

Typical plot complications aside, Donal Logue and Kate Walsh have terrific chemistry. Logue plays Sam in a unique way. He’s not cool but he’s not intentionally awkward. He’s a lost soul and Logue’s hangdog expressions perfectly capture that quality. You can sense why women find him appealing even as he's not a traditional 'Hunk.' He’s also soul sick and Kate Walsh plays just the kind of person who looks for and heals the soul sick. She’s compassionate and understanding but not to a magical degree. Walsh grounds Kate with charm and experience. It’s a lovely and lived in performance.

Sometime Other Than Now will be available from Gravitas Ventures via your favorite streaming rental service on March 5th. Don't ask me about the title, it makes sense for Sam's story but it's frustratingly vague, like a placeholder title waiting for an actual title to be written.