Swedish director Lasse Hallström (My Life as a Dog, The Cider House Rules) brings his unique sensibility for finding the whimsical and bizarre in the everyday to Peter Hedges’s cult novel about the life of a dysfunctional but appealing family in small town America. Gilbert (Depp) is the family’s able, responsible, bread-winning member, who must cope with a mentally retarded brother (DiCaprio, in an Oscar-nominated performance), two immature and squabbling sisters, and an immobile, 500-pound mother in mourning for her suicide husband. Strange, whimsical, and sweet, the film makes Gilbert’s good nature and longing to escape a plausible variation on the American dream.