Henry Poole is Here

Henry Poole is Here | |
| Director: | Mark Pellington |
| Cast: | Luke Wilson, Radha Mitchell, Adriana Barraza, George Lopez, Cheryl Hines |
| Release Date: | 2008 |
| Genre: | Drama |
Hanging an entire picture around Luke Wilson is a dubious task, particularly when he's playing a miserable, depressive lout. Wilson's Henry Poole recently overpaid for a run-down house in his bland LA suburb, where he holes up all day with his buddies Jack Daniels and Jim Beam. Despite insisting that he "won't be here that long," his super-perky real estate agent Meg (Cheryl Hines) has the outside stucco redone when Henry isn't looking, leaving behind a curiously shaped water mark. Since, apparently, every woman in town wants to save him--including his neighbors, the insistently nosy Esperanza (Adriana Barraza) and comely single-mom Dawn (Radha Mitchell)--the poor guy can't even buy booze in peace, since a cute but frightfully myopic supermarket cashier named, ahem, Patience (Rachel Seiferth) persists in offering him chirpy sermons about faith. The intrusions only get worse when Esperanza decides that the water stain is actually a heavenly sign, and starts leading daily pilgrimages into Henry's back yard. Director Mark Pellington cut his teeth on music videos in the '90s and with thrillers such as 2002's The Mothman Prophecies, but here takes shaky steps into the realm of inspirational melodrama and the end result is likable but hokey.