So this is a… well, I guess it’s a romantic comedy, but it doesn’t really read as one tonally.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus meets James Gandolfini at a party, and they start dating. This is obviously a movie made before Gandolfini’s death in 2013, but now that I’m looking it up, it turns out that it was released a few months after his death. Which must have totally killed the vibe of the movie, because it’s hard to just sit back and watch a light-hearted movie starring a guy who just recently died. Yikes.

But at a decade’s remove, that doesn’t loom over it so much. The reason I mentioned the date originally before getting sidetracked there is that even though it’s a decade old, both leads are in their fifties, and they’re playing characters who are about their actual ages. They’ve both been married before, and divorced; they both have kids who are going off to college soon. So this isn’t a movie about besotted teens falling in love, it’s a movie about people who have done all this before, who have seen their marriages end, who are going into things with their eyes open.

Which turns out to be the problem: Louis-Dreyfus accidentally ends up hanging out with Gandolfini’s ex — it’s not revealed immediately that this is the case, it kind of drifts into being more obvious before it snaps into being undeniable. Once she realizes it, though, she… keeps hanging out with the ex (who doesn’t know that she’s dating him) to find out what she found so bad about him, kind of checking the references, as it were. Shockingly, this turns out to cause some problems, and that’s the core of the plot proper.

That core story was maybe my least favorite part of the movie; it’s the part that was the most contrived, and didn’t fit naturally into a movie that’s otherwise very naturalistic. The real strength of the movie is its characters’ vulnerability, as these people try to enter into a new relationship with all the trust this requires, despite having had relationships end and knowing well their own imperfections. (TBH, Gandolfini’s performance works better here simply because he actually is overweight and not especially attractive, and is believable as this kinda schlubby guy; with Louis-Dreyfus, you have to suspend your disbelief and pretend she’s not an extremely attractive woman.)

Tonally, I feel like the best word for this movie is “gentle.” It’s not especially intense, it’s not cruel to its characters, it’s just this kind of movie where people get together, make mistakes, and see if they can keep being together after that. It’s not amazing or anything, but it’s enjoyable.