Ending Executed Poorly (Spoilers If You Couldn't Guess)

This was an enjoyable although very flawed film, one I'd definitely recommend for people wanting to pass time with their family over the Christmas/New Year period.

Although they set up the parallels between Dan and his daughter Cara's romance and his eldest daughter having to drive him at the key moment in the film pretty well. The 'moral' dilemma at the end for Dan was executed very poorly in my opinion. It's never really set up that the Dan's daughters didn't want him to find a new love in his life and this issue comes out of nowhere when they confront him. The writers seem to take for granted that the audience would assume that this is an obvious dilemma in a family where one of the parents had died despite there being almost no set-up of this prior to the confrontation. As a result, the dilemma feels secondary to the bigger dilemma of Dan taking his brother's girlfriend which is set up far more as the bigger issue.

In addition, Dan's explanation for pursuing new love is very poor in my opinion. Instead of giving a satisfactory explanation he attempts to punish himself which comes across as trite on Dan's part. Despite this, his daughters, who only a few minutes ago were appalled by their father for trying to find new love, instantly accept their father for what he's done and come to his aid, this again felt unrealistic (also why was there such a rush to get to Marie?).

And then we see the final scene in the film where everything's happily ever after. Dan marries Marie and Mitch doesn't appear to harbour any resentment. I would have liked to have seen a scene explaining why this is so.

My point is not that the ending is bad or doesn't make much sense, it's that for all of the key issues there's either little set-up (Dan and his daughters) or there's little pay-off (Dan and Mitch). Personally I felt there should have been more time given to the effect of Dan's wife's death had on the family as well as between Dan and his daughters. The writers clearly wanted to keep the time-span of the film spread out over this long weekend but there were too many big issues and moral dilemmas to deal with over this time-frame in a satisfactory manner for me.