If Paul Giamati is reading the phone book, my guess is you'll like the story. When the story's a good one, like "Win Win," the movie can make an evening.In this wrestling chick flick, Giamati plays a lawyer with a faltering practice who coaches the local high school wrestling team, which has had about as much success as his law practice of late. One of Mike Flaherty's (Giamati) few remaining clients is an old man in the early stages of dementia, whom the court wants to house in a senior home, but the old boy wants to stay home. Mike, seeing the $1,500 a month he can get for caring for the old man, offers to become his guardian. He promptly puts the old man in a care facility, constituting a breach of ethics at best.
The old man, played crisply by Bert Young, has a druggie daughter he wants to locate in order to take care of him, but she's in rehab. Her high school-age son shows up looking for grandpa and the plot thickens. Mike and his wife take the boy in. He turns out to be a state title level talent and joins Mike's family. Everything's going well until the mom gets out of rehab and wants her dad and son (because of the father's money) and the complication threatens everything.
It's an often funny, always discombobulated scenario and, though this one's not going to win any prizes, it's worth the ticket price just to see Giamatti's expressionless hound dog face tell the story.
Yes, Paul Giamati is a great actor. All of the movies in which he appears are entertainment. I enjoy watching his movies and in fact watching them more than once just to see his skill.
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