The charm of The Meddler isn't the kind that benefits from big pushes forward in narrative or massive plot movements, but it revels in heart-warming humor, vibrant characters and what's clearly a deep affection for its story.

With a plot that plays like a string of incidental encounters, The Meddler could easily have felt like a glorified sitcom. But its heroine’s grief, her goodness and her complicated relationship with her daughter all feel so lived-in and true that the film stays grounded.

Her character, reportedly based on writer-director Lorene Scafaria’s own mother, isn’t drawn with any particular depth or nuance (and the broad New Yawk accent Sarandon tries on is about as authentically Brooklyn as a Sara Lee bagel).

Here Scafaria makes nice use of her widescreen frame, and cuts the movie together crisply—a lot of the jokes actually come from the cuts, and the way they punctuate the often pitch-perfect dialogue.

Apart from being a series of comic vignettes, The Meddler is also framed partially as a romance, and a very endearing one at that.