The supporting cast is equally lackluster. The usually spot-on Dermot Mulroney‘s portrayal of a lost father, has succumbed to grief and stuck in dated thought, lacks any stabbing or penetrating quality to make the performance enter your psyche. Grace’s love interest, Kyle, played by Christopher Shand, would be more believable if he were made of ketchup. Shand looks too old to be in high school, can’t convincingly be sincere, aggressive or affectionate.

The only character that I felt any emotional sincerity from was Elizabeth Shue as Grace’s mother. Sure, there is one ridiculously written super-speech that is meant to bring tears to our eyes and falls flat, but it doesn’t ruin her overall performance. She does seem to be emotionally aware that her character is deeply in love with her children and husband. Lindsey Bowen, Shue’s character, has the widest range of emotion and depth. Shue performs beautifully as a mother who settled for a life well below her dreams. She was not the cause of the movie’s scab-picking quality.

A great deal of the problem with the acting lays at the writers’, Chris Frisina, Karen Janszen and Lisa Petersen’s, feet. This movie is bulging with half baked lines heard in every B rated movie for the last ten years. The writers even pepper in a few worn out visuals that make the movie uninteresting to watch, even though it is beautifully shot. My favorites sounded like they were taken out of the mouth of Vince McMahon and Stone Cold Steve Austin in a WWE pre-match psyche-out banter; “You’re not tough enough.” “I am tough enough.” Then there was the typical, pre-equal opportunity; “A girl?” Nearly all the important dialogue could have been taken from any book or movie. The themes of the movie make me reminisce about every story in every story telling medium to which I’ve been exposed.

Gracie tries to be a movie with heart, but as with so many things, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Gracie is a shameful example of acting and writing and it would be in everyone’s best interest if this movie flopped in the theater as quickly as possible. We don’t want movies like this to influence the cinematic sphere… at all.